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| Proofpoint Korea Country Manager Lee Seok-ho speaks during a press conference at WeWork Samseong Station in Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of Proofpoint Korea |
By Park Jae-hyuk
The Great Resignation, an ongoing economic trend of employees quitting their jobs in high numbers starting in early 2021, as well as mass layoffs resulting from economic uncertainty, threaten the cybersecurity of Korean and global companies, Proofpoint's survey of chief information security officers (CISOs) in 16 countries showed Thursday.
The U.S. enterprise security company said during a press conference in Seoul that 83 percent of CISOs at Korea's major companies responded that employees leaving their organizations have played a role in data loss events. The number was a bit higher than the global average of 82 percent.
In addition, only 38 percent of Korean CISOs were confident about the adequacy of their organizations' data protection systems. This was much lower than the global average of 60 percent.
Among the Korean respondents, 75 percent answered that their organizations are at risk of experiencing material cyberattacks within the next 12 months. They especially expressed concerns about email fraud, ransomware attacks, insider threats and distributed denial-of-service attacks.
"In order to prevent data losses caused by the globally increasing cyberattacks and ransomware, the competence of CISOs has become more important," Proofpoint Korea Country Manager Lee Seok-ho said. "We can protect our clients from cyberattacks and help them monitor whether their employees leak confidential data."
Proofpoint set up its Korean subsidiary last year. This was the first time for the company to survey Korean CISOs to publish its annual Voice of the CISO report.
In order to release the report, the company received responses from 1,600 CISOs at medium-sized and large organizations across different industries.
Throughout the first three months of this year, 100 CISOs were interviewed in each market across 16 countries: the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Brazil and Korea.
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