Barracuda releases global research on email security

Last month we released our global research on user training and email security.  We have some commentary here and you can download the complete report here.  We also have details in the press release here.

This research includes responses from 634 executives, individual contributors and team managers serving in IT-security roles in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Companies surveyed include small, mid-sized and enterprise businesses across several industries.  Here are a few of the key findings:

Email security threats are pervasive - 87% of IT security professional said their company faced an attempted email-based security threat in the past year

There’s a strong consensus of opinions about employee training and its effect on email-based security - 100% said end-user training is important to prevent attacks, and phishing simulation and social-engineering detection were identified as the most beneficial email-security capabilities

The threat of ransomware is a concern for 88% - more than 1/3 have already experienced an attack

In addition to what we covered in our last post, there were some interesting findings regarding archiving, compliance, and Office 365. 

• More than 90% said email archiving is critical, citing a variety of business benefits, including:
  
  
  
  • Maintaining an audit trail for compliance purposes
  
  
  • Investigating suspicious activity
  
  
  • Cutting costs for e-discovery requests
  
  
  
  


• Larger businesses are more concerned about Office 365 email security; smaller businesses are less concerned.  This may be because larger companies have more data at risk in Office 365, due to having broader deployments rolled out that include SharePoint, OneDrive, and other applications.

Archiving

It's encouraging to see the findings around email archiving.  It isn't just about compliance; archiving helps cut IT costs and it reduces the System Administrator "fatigue" of managing desktop "archive" folders and PST files.  Barracuda has encouraged the use of email archiving for years, and we offer solutions that put this technology within reach of even the smallest companies.

 

Office 365

The differences between demographics are not that surprising; larger companies are usually more focused on security than small businesses.  Larger companies have more resources to stay current on security threats, they are more likely to have employees who specialize in security, and they may put more into Office 365 to take advantage of greater efficiencies.  It's interesting to consider these results in the context of our 2017 research on this topic, which showed that security concerns were the primary reasons for not migrating to Office 365.  Adoption of Office 365 continues to grow, indicating that the migration is increasingly worth the security risk for these companies.  As you look at the research data, keep in mind that many respondents are neither more nor less concerned about security now that their data is in Office 365.

 

You can download the full report from our corporate site here.  If you'd like to speak to someone about how Barracuda can help address your email security concerns, visit our website here.