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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Asia Pacific’s financial services

industry has still a long way to go

regarding IT security

IDC highlights in one of its recent reports that IT security In the hyper-connected world of today, the methods by
of financial services organizations might not be as ad- which threat actors will try to breach a network are
vanced as expect, bringing the confidence in their good many and varied, and traditional IT approaches of fo-
service down. Trust is a critical aspect of all business cusing on perimeter prevention, without investing suffi-
and particularly the financial services industry. ciently into network detection and remediation, is at that
heart of the issue.
We trust banks with our money, insurance companies
with our health and future, and investment companies “The bad guys are already on the inside, and we are all
with our savings. Yet, IDC’s recent study found that, on looking outside to see what we can stop thereby miss-
a scale of 1-5 for IT security maturity, more than two ing the advanced threat actors who can create the
thirds of all respondents (71.6%) were at either stage 1 worst scenario for any business,” Piff concluded.
(29.2%) or Stage 2 (42.4%).
“This is not what we had expected to see,” says Simon The IDC IT Security MaturityScape is available at
Piff, Vice President of Security Practice for IDC Asia IDC.com. Furthermore, to provide an update on IT Se-
Pacific. Piff said, “The key issues at hand that resulted curity technology and trends, IDC is holding an IT Se-
in this shocking statistic is very much about the way IT curity Conference series that aims to articulate how the
security is considered within organizations. Thinking threat landscape is changing, explain why business
that IT security is a problem for IT to solve is both short- leaders need to be more concerned about the potential
sighted and does not embrace the full issue.” impact of breaches, even in markets with minimal legis-
“Organizations must think in terms of ‘business risk’ first lation, and provide insight into what some of the world
then decide how IT can help mitigate some of these class organizations are doing to achieve the highest
risks, and not simply assign an ‘IT’ label to it,” he added. levels of IT Security.

18 May 2017 - (Cyber) Security & Data Protection