Software inefficiencies play a major role in slowing an organisation's ability to detect and respond to cyberthreats, says security intelligence company LogRhythm.
One in three IT decision-makers say their teams spend at least three hours a day on tasks that could be handled by software. Most of them think that the average cybersecurity professional wastes close to 10 hours a week because of inadequate software.
The study, commissioned by LogRhythm and conducted by Widmeyer, surveyed 751 IT decision-makers in the US, Britain and Asia-Pacific and found that an overwhelming majority (88%) of respondents view insider threats as a dangerous and growing concern in defending their organisations.
More than half of respondents in Asia-Pacific depend on software to prioritise threats.
"The proliferation and innovation of business-enabling technology combined with the speed of today's advanced hackers to adapt to these technologies is making it increasingly difficult -- if not impossible -- for security teams to evolve their response capabilities as quickly as their adversaries," said James Carder, chief information security officer and vice-president of LogRhythm Labs.
The good news is that artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a critical weapon that organisations can use to fight the cyberwar.
Under half of IT executives surveyed use AI. US executives are the least likely to use AI, while those in Asia-Pacific are more open.
Nonetheless, IT executives in the US believe that AI will be the biggest game-changer for security over the next several years. These decision-makers expect faster threat detection to be the No.1 benefit of cloud-based AI security, followed by superior data analysis and improved collaboration.
AI in the cloud can leverage deep learning across millions of customer deployments. Cloud-based AI can thus become faster, more accurate and more intelligent than on-premise alternatives.
"Applying AI throughout the threat life cycle will eventually automate and enhance entire categories of security operations centre activity and enable increasingly effective detection of real threats," said Chris Brazdziunas, vice-president for products at LogRhythm.
"AI continuously learns what is normal and evolves to register subtle changes in behaviour models that suggest a breach might occur," he said. "By eliminating the noise and accurately detecting true threats, AI enables organisations to minimise false positives and be more productive."
Fewer than half of all the organisations surveyed use some form of AI to combat cyberthreats, but more than 90% of the executives that do use AI believe it has improved the effectiveness of their cybersecurity operations.