Lack of staff, threat visibility, and technology consolidation drive priorities

It’s no secret, the way employees work and the tools they use have changed drastically over the past 2 years.

Less obvious but equally important is how cybersecurity operations in smaller companies are evolving to support and protect the systems enabling those changes. With cloud migrations and mobility eroding the perimeter-based security model, CISOs find themselves forced to adopt new platforms to discover and remediate security threats.

How much (and quickly) are things changing?

To determine the magnitude and speed of these shifts, in Q1 2022 we repeated our 2021 survey of small security teams, speaking with 200 CISOs from organizations with 500 – 10,000 employees.

Get the 2022 Survey Results

With cyberattacks and ransomware hitting record highs in 2021, the results of our survey (from companies with security budgets of $1m USD or less) show a quickly changing set of priorities and provide insights into how small security teams are adapting to an ever more hostile landscape.

More key survey insights:

• Overlapping threat protection tools are the #1 pain point for small security teams.
• EDR/EPP is the top prevention technology in use today.
• Next-gen anti-virus is on the top of the list to purchase next year.
• Reliance on automated threat remediation doubled year-over-year.
• Almost all respondents (96%) plan to consolidate security platforms, with 63% calling XDR their top choice.

The rising use of cloud-based security technologies, outsourcing to address talent shortages, and growing attacks on small and mid-sized enterprises were also addressed in the survey report.

What’s the big takeaway? CISOs of small security teams are adapting their approach to cybersecurity. Check out the survey results to get the details.

Download the 2022 CISO Survey of Small Security Teams results.