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Absolute’s Cyber Resilience Risk Index 2024 finds organisations woefully unready to face the “AI wave”.
A new report from cyber security firm Absolute has found the vast majority of organisations around the world are woefully underprepared for taking on artificial intelligence (AI) applications and the security risks they represent.
According to the Absolute Security Cyber Resilience Risk Index 2024, ninety-two per cent of all endpoints the company monitors – that is, PCs – are not capable of leveraging AI applications due to limitations in installed RAM. Any company that does want to get its entire fleet of systems AI-ready will need to perform a major, organisation-wide upgrade process, which could, in turn, lead to a raft of security threats.
At the same time, as organisations may need to look at upgrading their hardware, they’re also falling behind on patching the critical systems they currently have. Despite patches becoming available sooner than ever, most industries are weeks or even months behind when it comes to patching systems.
The two worst sectors in this regard are education and government organisations, which take – on average – 119 and 82 days, respectively, to apply critical patches.
More alarmingly, 14 per cent of devices have no form of endpoint protection installed, and even when endpoint protection is present, it’s not operating effectively on 24 per cent of devices.
Christy Wyatt, Absolute Security’s chief executive, said that the most simple defensive strategies are being ignored.
“As an industry, we are intently focused on the inevitable attack coming, breach waiting to happen, and disruption around the next corner. Not enough attention is paid to the simple strategies that can dramatically increase your resilience to ensure you remain resistant to vulnerabilities and can recover quickly. The stakes continue to get higher as we face the urgent need to adopt AI and other innovations to remain competitive,” Wyatt said in a statement.
“Cyber resilience is a paradigm that extends beyond traditional cyber security. It’s about ensuring that your digital operations, which are the heart of your organisation, can withstand and quickly recover from cyber attacks, technical malfunctions, deliberate tampering, and new deployments.”
You can read the full Absolute Security Cyber Resilience Risk Index 2024 report here.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.