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New Canon Survey Reveals Vulnerabilities in Companies’ Security Strategy

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Noting that while digital technologies help companies work smarter, they can also result in security vulnerabilities that can cost them money, time, intellectual property, and customer trust, Canon U.S.A. today released its latest Office of the Future survey. The survey found that all organizations surveyed across a range of vertical markets experienced a cyber threat over the past year.

In its mission to take a holistic approach to security – from the device level to cybersecurity practices – Canon exploresdthe top cyber threats based on the survey and offers insight as to how Canon products and solutions can help companies proactively protect themselves to work to close critical gaps in their cybersecurity agendas.

Conducted by global tech market advisory firm ABI Research, the survey of more than one thousand U.S. IT professionals reveals three, pertinent cybersecurity threats:

  • Malware and Ransomware: More than one-third of respondents consider malware and ransomware a first priority threat. Yet, 25 percent of respondents say that employees have limited to no security awareness, nor do they understand their role in prevention.

Canon noted that Canon and McAfee design engineers recently joined forces and worked collaboratively to implement McAfee Embedded Control as a standard built-in security component on Canon third generation imageRUNNER ADVANCE third edition MFPs. The feature, once enabled, helps protect against zero-day and advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks by blocking the execution of unauthorized applications through intelligent whitelisting – so that only administrative-approved software can be downloaded – substantially reducing malware risks.

  • Compromised Devices: In today’s digital age, and with remote working trends on the rise, 21 percent of surveyed IT decision-makers rate compromised devices as a priority threat. Respondents then rank data security, network security, and user authentication and ID management as the top-three most relevant technologies to help counteract this threat.

In addition to the benefits from its recent McAfee integration, Canon noted that it continues to take measures to help users tackle the many different potential target areas of compromise. This includes helping to protect the imageRUNNER ADVANCE MFP hard drive with a number of optional encryption and overwrite features, offering user authentication and Secure Print release functions via the company’s flagship print-management solution uniFLOW, as well as the inclusion of SIEM integration capability in the latest imageRUNNER ADVANCE lineup.

  • Social Engineering: The human factor is a persistent threat. In fact, survey respondents consider malicious insiders (30 percent) and human error (25 percent) to be the two top threat sources.

As employees may not always understand, or be aware of what is a pervasive threat, Canon, in addition to its flagship uniFLOW offering, works with two notable third parties in order to help employees share information outside of their organization: cloud content and email management solutions Box and mxHero. Canon also noted that it marries its advanced technology, such as predictive maintenance, with the skills of its channel partners and service providers through ongoing training and support to help provide a comprehensive solution to customers.

Survey results include additional gaps, such as lack of appropriate cybersecurity spending across certain verticals; however, it also provides some hope, with nearly 25 percent of those surveyed stating that they’re looking to increase investments in the key growth area of cloud security in the future.

Other findings from the survey include:

  • Nearly half (46 percent) of respondents indicate security spending is less than 5 percent of their total IT budget
  • Only 25 percent of IT professionals have deployed state-of-the-art disaster recovery procedures to deal with the emergent threat horizon.
  • Almost 9 out of 10 IT professionals believe a data breach will equate to 50 percent or less of annual revenue; however, actual costs could potentially range from 1 to 7 years of annual revenue, according to ABI Research analysts.
  • When adopting and rolling out cybersecurity solutions, technological competency (33 percent) is the top barrier, beating out the second barrier: budget constraints (23 percent).
  • 25 percent of IT leaders believe that employees have limited or no understanding 1 in 4 of threats or prevention.
  • More than half (59 percent) of organizations already have a security agenda in place and almost 25 percent plan to make cloud security their top investment moving forward.
  • Respondents perceive malicious insiders (30 percent) and human error (25 percent) to be the top cyber threat sources.
  • More than one-third of IT professionals identify malware and ransomware as the top priority threat to their organization

For more information on the findings from Canon’s latest Office of the Future survey, visit Canon here.

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