About 88 percent of respondents among the surveyed 1,755 enterprises don’t believe their information security fully meets their organization’s needs. Over a third of the respondents still think it unlikely that they would be able to identify a sophisticated cyber attack.

These are a few of the key findings from the Global Information Security Survey (GISS) 2015, the 18th one of its kind conducted by EY, one of the global professional services leaders, released yesterday in Beijing.

The report reveals the breadth and complexity of the increase in cyber technology, and how the nature of cyber threats has evolved. Cyber attackers are continually changing their tactics, increasing their persistence and expanding their capabilities.

The majority of survey respondents agree that there is a need for a greater awareness of how our daily lives are increasingly interwoven with internet-connected devices and what this means for an organization’s cybersecurity approach.

With billions of people connected to the Internet, and the number of connected devices expected to exceed 50 billion by the year 2020, the IoT (internet of things) will assert radical changes that have the potential to affect everyone and every business.

The survey identified the top two vulnerabilities as careless and underprepared employees, and outdated information security controls or architecture. Cybersecurity needs to be an issue that is addressed at all levels across every organization and beyond, further down the chain.

Cybersecurity is more than a technology issue and it cannot remain in the IT domain, said Lisa Li, EY’s partner of advisory services. Technological advances can dim the focus on people’s cybersecurity competencies and training.

Similarly, cybersecurity cannot be the responsibility of any one member of the board; it affects every level of a business, in often subtle and not easily recognized ways. For this reason, organizations must deploy an “active defense” approach to sharpen their security intelligence, she said.

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