For several years, eSentire has published globally focused Threat Reports based on data from our Security Operations Centres (SOCs) that monitor 650-plus customers around the world. Over the last two years, eSentire’s European business has grown by over 90 percent to 120-plus customers across 10 European markets. The bulk of this growth has come from the United Kingdom (U.K.). This expanded European footprint delivers a sample size large enough for us to publish a dedicated U.K. Threat Report for the first time.
Globally, Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a rapidly growing segment of the security market, but it is still one that is seeing early adoption in some regions and verticals. According to research from Gartner, five percent of organisations are currently using MDR services and that is predicted to increase to 15 percent by 2020.
The critical takeaway from eSentire’s U.K. Threat Intelligence Spotlight is that the global growth in botnet activity drove a 140% year-over-year increase in the number of cybersecurity incidents experienced by U.K. businesses. This increase in attack traffic also caused nearly 40% of small and medium enterprises in the U.K to experience at least one cybersecurity incident.
Because of the need to protect sensitive business data, industries such as finance and legal were among the earliest adopters of eSentire’s MDR services, and as such, these industries represent the majority in this report’s dataset. This report leverages eSentire’s anonymised customer network traffic and is being released to complement survey data from private and public sector sources that already exist.
One such example is the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s 2019 Cyber Security Breaches Survey which revealed that 60 percent of medium businesses and 61 percent of large businesses reported having a breach in 2018. While the incident rates discussed in our report are slightly lower than what is reported in the U.K Government’s survey, this is largely driven by the fact the eSentire customer base is typically more mature in their security posture than a small or medium business which does not have a dedicated managed security service.
The findings in the report also detail how U.K. businesses experienced a 20% decline in phishing in the past year, a fact echoed by recent data from the GCHQ that showed how the use of automation tools, the UK has reduced its share of global phishing from 5% to 2.4%.
The report itself id full of interesting tidbits and actionable insight, and we hope that the our U.K. data can be a valuable resource for security practitioners, IT decision makers and senior executives tasked with protecting companies or offices located within the U.K.
The full U.K. Threat Intelligence Spotlight can be downloaded from: https://www.esentire.com/resource-library/uk-threat-spotlight/
