Most IT organizations have little to no confidence in their ability to manage digital threats despite significantly increasing their near-term digital defense investments.

That’s according to RiskIQ‘s 2017 State of Enterprise Digital Defense Report, which includes responses from 465 IT information security decision makers in organizations with more than 1,000 employees in the United States and United Kingdom. Overall, the report reveals a bleak outlook of organizations’ digital defense posture, with many enterprise security practitioners overwhelmed by the size and tenacity of external digital threats, and lacking confidence in their processes, systems and tools.

RiskIQ’s Scott Gordon

Scott Gordon, RiskIQ’s chief marketing officer, tells Channel Partners that virtually all (99.4 percent) respondents expect to increase spending on digital threat management tools and services, and all respondents saw these tools as being very important or somewhat important.

“This is a huge channel opportunity,” he said. “Even service providers that offer endpoint security or security information management services are incorporating threat intelligence to their analysis and reporting processes, so this security sector provides timely means to get involved and support their customers’ digital defense strategy.”

An average of 40 percent of organizations experienced five or more significant security incidents in the past 12 months, the study revealed. Among the most cited external threats: malware, ransomware, phishing, domain and brand abuse, online scams, rogue mobile apps and social impersonation. Big brands in banking, retail and consumer goods had the most prevalence of attacks.

Nearly half of respondents view cyber-threat intelligence as very important, and all respondents saw cyber-threat intelligence tools as being very important or somewhat important — especially in fortifying research and reducing time to respond to external threats.

Organizations outsource a third of digital-threat management tasks to MSSPs, and outsourcing will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 13 percent over the next two years, according to RiskIQ.

“In many respects, the outsourcing of some digital defenses to MSSPs is occurring as these providers are adding such services to provide value to their existing customers,” Gordon said. “Smaller companies expect to see the highest increase in the use of outsourcing, most likely reflecting their lack of internal resources. MSSPs today may not offer solutions across the broad spectrum of threat types and digital channels, or could experience similar inefficiencies in multi-tool use … the average enterprise uses 35 tools to address external security threats. The report suggests there will be a consolidation of coverage areas and tools to support the MSSP market and their customers.”

Digital threat management appears more progressive among organizations in financial services, manufacturing and consumer goods, according to the report. Larger companies felt they were better able to update control systems and collaborate across departments, while smaller companies felt best able to inform others about the status of external attacks.

“Companies are recognizing the mounting external threat issues and impact — and investing in people, process and tools,” Gordon said. “Specifically, cyber threat intelligence and digital threat management tools are used by different security teams within organizations. These tools provide context, and offer holistic insight into exposures, exploits, adversaries and attack infrastructure details that help organizations discover, understand, anticipate, ward off, minimize and remediate digital threats and attacks.”