Study shows that the region is lagging behind in its training and investment in the area
Elly Yates-Roberts |
E-mail attacks are decreasing the productivity of IT employees in the EMEA region because they are not adequately trained to remediate them quickly, according to a recent study commissioned by Barracuda Networks.
The study showed that IT teams in EMEA organisations receive more suspicious e-mails than the global average, with 7% receiving over 50 per day and 32% receiving between 6 and 50 per day.
Although 44% of respondents reported that less than 10% of these actually turned out to fraudulent, it is the time taken to identify this that is causing issues. Over 80% of the respondents reported spending over 30 minutes remediating each e-mail attack.
These attacks and the time spent resolving them are causing further issues outside the workplace. Almost three-quarters of respondents reported experiencing higher stress levels, worrying about potential e-mail security when they’re at home, and being forced to work nights and weekends to address e-mail security issues.
This stress is being reinforced by a lack of faith in the organisation’s security. Over half (52%) of EMEA respondents believe that this is unlikely to have improved in the past year.
Barracuda’s report suggests that EMEA budgets seem to be a contributing factor to this waning productivity and heightened stress; they are increasing at a much slower rate than the rest of the world. Over half (54%) of EMEA organisations have not changed their spending over the past year, versus a global average of 45%, while only 39% have increased their spending (compared to 48% worldwide).
In addition, organisations are also lacking the correct security awareness training, with 23% of EMEA respondents reporting they had never received e-mail attack training, compared with the global average of 17%.
Read the full report.