The data comes from a survey of 268 CISOs and CIOs in the United States, at organizations with more than 1,000 employees. This is the second time we’ve run this research program. The first program was run in 2023, and this program builds on and extends our earlier research.

The key takeaways from this research are:

• Cybersecurity driven by changing threat response calculus
  Increasing prices for cybersecurity insurance, the growing use of AI in cyberattacks, software supply chain compromise, and return-to-office mandates for employees are the top trends and challenges driving how CISOs and CIOs approach cybersecurity in 2025. All force a reevaluation of how best to address current and emerging threats.
• Cloud infrastructure security, cybersecurity talent availability, and control and
  ethical processing of data top the priority stack
  Out of 24 potential investment areas for cybersecurity, two thirds of organizations assigned the highest priority to cloud infrastructure, internal cybersecurity talent, and compliant data processing. They see weaknesses in their current posture that are misaligned with where they want to be and are investing the resources to do something about it.
• Budgets continue to rise, showing resilience across economic cycles
  Almost all organizations have received a higher budget for cybersecurity over the previous two years, and most believe they could put even more budget to productive and effective use.
• Strong risk management disciplines make a significant difference
  Organizations with higher efficacy in managing the business risks associated with key cybersecurity areas such as applications, cloud, and identities show much higher commitment to address security weaknesses and are spending accordingly. Being able to see what is and isn’t happening drives change.
• Organizations must do the work to understand their priorities
  Investment priorities for any given organization must be set within the context of their current posture, real-world threat data, and known areas of concern (and unknown areas of weakness). This is the fundamental work that cybersecurity decision-makers and influencers must coordinate.

This research was sponsored by BIO-key International, OpenText, and Salt Security.

If your firm provides cybersecurity solutions AND you would like to spread this research to your customers and prospects, please get in contact to talk about licensing options.

Presented on August 17, 2022

Watch this webinar to hear from Osterman Research who conducted the benchmarking study and the architect of the Ermetic maturity model as they discuss the significance of the key findings and explain how you can use the model and the benchmark to improve your own cloud security maturity.

Among the findings they will explore are:

• Demonstrable ROI: 42% of companies investing more than 50 hours per week on cloud security are achieving the highest levels of maturity (Levels 3 and 4)
• Bigger not better: Only 7% of companies with more than 10,000 employees were at level three or four in terms of maturity, compared with 18% for companies with between 2,500 and 9,999 employees, and 24% for companies with 500 to 2,499 employees
• Shared blindspot: 81% of organizations lack full visibility into all resources that are directly accessible from the Internet

Register and watch the webinar

Read the report: State of Cloud Security Maturity 2022

Presented on June 24, 2022

The managed cybersecurity services market is undergoing a significant shift. Organizations are upgrading from alert-oriented Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) to action-oriented Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services.

The need for change is evident, and organizations early to embrace MDR services report a higher security posture across multiple dimensions. Those organizations that have not yet upgraded from an MSSP evidence an overwhelming and urgent intent to do so.

Learn about MDR adoption – especially those driven by AI and automation – and how this is expected to more than double in the next 12 months, compelled by an excess of alerts, alert fatigue, a staffing crisis, and a profound increase in the number of advanced threats across any given attack surface.

Register and watch on BrightTalk

Read the report: The Rush to MDR Services

The growing number of cloud services available in most organizations enable fast time-to-market for productivity and collaboration tools, but the easy availability of these capabilities can pose significant security risks for organizations. 

Join SonicWall and Osterman Research as they collaborate to help you understand the current threats landscape and the best practices to protect against phishing, ransomware and email fraud.

We will cover the following:

• Major concerns and issues with SaaS adoption
• What to look for in a CASB solution
• Overview of SonicWall Cloud App Security

Register to watch the recording

Sponsored by Forcepoint

Executive Summary

Cloud services enable fast time-to-market for productivity and collaboration tools, but the easy availability of these capabilities poses significant security risks for organizations. For example:

• Employees may be using insecure cloud services for sharing business documents that contain confidential or sensitive information.
• Unauthorized actors may gain access through credential harvesting or brute force attacks, triggering a data breach.
• A disgruntled employee may download confidential documents just before leaving the organization to go work for a competitor.

A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is a security offering that provides visibility into and protection for the cloud applications being used by employees in an organization. In general, this means that CASBs report on what cloud applications are being used (both sanctioned and unsanctioned), can alert an administrator when a specific action or chain of actions is identified in a cloud application, and can interject varying types of controls in real-time as action is unfolding.

In this paper, we compare and contrast the capabilities offered in two CASBs that work with Office 365: Microsoft’s own Office 365 Cloud App Security offered in the Office 365 Enterprise E5 plan, and Forcepoint’s CASB offering. In brief:

• The Office 365 Cloud App Security service is included in the Enterprise E5 plan. Office 365 Cloud App Security is a tightly scoped edition of the full Microsoft Cloud App Security service. The latter is available standalone, as part of the Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 plan, or as part of a Microsoft 365 E5 plan. Office 365 Cloud App Security deals with Office 365 and a small set of similar cloud apps. Microsoft Cloud App Security deals with many thousands of cloud apps that are both similar and dissimilar to Office 365, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Neither support Exchange on-premises.
• Forcepoint CASB provides visibility, policy enforcement and user behavior analysis for thousands of cloud apps, including Office 365. It is available as a cloud service and as an on-premises server, and is one element of Forcepoint’s comprehensive security platform that includes malware detection, data loss prevention, and email security, among others.

Request a Copy

The growing number of cloud services available in most organizations enable fast time-to-market for productivity and collaboration tools, but the easy availability of these capabilities can pose significant security risks for organizations. 

Join SonicWall and Osterman Research as they collaborate to help you understand the current threats landscape and the best practices to protect against phishing, ransomware and email fraud.

We will cover the following:

• Major concerns and issues with SaaS adoption
• What to look for in a CASB solution
• Overview of SonicWall Cloud App Security

Register to watch the recording

Sponsored by Avanan, Forcepoint and SonicWall

Executive Summary

A CASB is an on-premises or cloud-based solution that serves as an intermediary between one or more cloud providers and an organization’s on-premises and/or cloud-based security infrastructure. A CASB acts to ensure that the organization’s security policies are executed properly by the cloud provider(s) that are used by the organization. CASBs enable security analysts and others within an organization to determine how cloud applications and services are being used, to identify any non- sanctioned “shadow IT” applications that might have been installed, and to provide insight into cloud-to-cloud operations.

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