Many businesses don’t know if a data breach happened to them

A data breach is one of the worst incidents that might happen to a business. However, the latest study shows many businesses are unaware if they’re hit by a security breach and their data is being stolen. As a result, many breaches remain unaddressed, and hackers can continue exploiting a company’s data for an unlimited time.

The cybersecurity experts at Vectra AI have surveyed over 2,000 IT security analysts to evaluate their awareness of data breaches. The report revealed that 97% of respondents are worried about missing important security events. Likewise, 71% said they’re possibly being compromised but not aware of it.

The scope of cyber security threats is growing yearly, and most security teams within companies can’t cope with that. For example, 66% of respondents to the Vectra AI survey said their alerts have increased “significantly.”

Is your business hit with a security breach? Most owners don’t know

The problem is that IT teams receive too many alerts, and they’re incapable of addressing them all. An IT team has received 4,500 alerts on average, and only two-thirds of those (67%) are addressed. The teams also complain about the “pointless alerts” that are wasting their time and might result in losing a major breach. Additionally, IT teams say the security tools are increasing their workload.

“This is creating a “spiral of more” which threatens to overwhelm their ability to respond quickly to alerts and manage breaches and is causing analysts to consider leaving their jobs,” Vectra AI said in a press release.

The adversities that the members of an IT team go through have made a lot of them look for new jobs. As per the latest estimations, two in five SecOps professionals want to move to a new job. Because they believe they’re wasting their time on pointless alerts. Constant stress, burnout, and “mind-numbing” boredom are other reasons SecOps professionals leave their roles.

Lack of motivation on the side of security teams allows back actors to target victims more easily. Just recently, Microsoft reported about a Chinese hacking group that could gain access to some of the high-profile clients’ email accounts. Chinese hackers also compromised some US government agencies’ emails.