A global study of more than 1,200 IT professionals in EMEA reveals that, in the last year, more than one in five enterprises has experienced a security breach and one in 10 has suffered a privacy breach.


Nearly half of enterprises (45%) said their enterprises either delayed or even missed an opportunity to reduce costs as a result of an IT-related problem or incident. With exactly half of the organizations reporting an IT staff shortage, these issues are likely to continue.

The study, conducted by ISACA, also found that 42% of organizations believed customer satisfaction had been reduced in the last 12 months due to an IT-related problem or incident.

Additionally, 42% had incurred unexpected expenses and 18% believed their reputation had been harmed due to IT issues. Ten percent even had a competitor beat them to market due to IT complications.

When looking at specific problems organizations had experienced, 35% had faced inadequate disaster recovery or business continuity measures, and 17% suffered a serious IT operations incident.

When asked about the issue most likely to impact their enterprise’s security in the next year, top answers were data leakage (17%), cyberattacks (15%), inadvertent employee mistakes (17%), incidents related to “bring your own device” (BYOD) (13%) and cloud computing (11%).

Fifteen percent said all of these issues were top concerns, and 9% believed that none of these are concerns.

“The survey shows that more than a third of respondents still report a disconnect between the information and business strategies,” said Dr. Derek Oliver, CEO of Ravenswood Consultants Ltd., co-chair of ISACA’s COBIT 5 Task Force and past president of the ISACA London Chapter.

“Using a business framework for IT governance, such as COBIT 5, will help clarify the roles of the business and information, and provide a common language and set of goals to get everyone on the same page.”

For global results of the survey, go here.