Navigating the Cybersecurity Landscape: European Leaders' Perspectives for 2024 and Beyond

About Navigating the Cybersecurity Landscape: European Leaders' Perspectives for 2024 and Beyond

CISOs and senior security leaders are continuously striving to outpace the evolving complexity of cyberthreats. With the average total cost of a data breach reaching an all-time high of USD 4.45 million in 2023 – up by 15.3% from 2020 – CISOs are drawing from technologies like artificial intelligence to strengthen their security postures even further and safeguard their enterprise networks.

As AI took center stage in 2023, organizations are forced to consider its potential as a threat and as an opportunity. What solutions and tools are security leaders exploring to guarantee the implementation of robust security strategies?

This report, Navigating the Cybersecurity Landscape: European Leaders’ Perspective for 2024 and Beyond, captures these dynamics, offering valuable insights derived from survey responses and personal interviews with 10,000 leading cybersecurity leaders who are members of the Aurora Live Executive Business Network. These insights aim to provide an overview on the current focus areas and challenges of Europe’s leading cybersecurity decision-makers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

- CIOs continue to be the main drivers of cybersecurity investments, followed by CISOs and CFOs.
- 71% of CISOs and security leaders are securing investments in network security measures, making it the biggest investment area this year.
- A majority of CISOs state their organizations are in the mature stages of investment in employee awareness, XDR, and ransomware resilience. AI-assisted solutions are already being piloted and adopted.
- The talent shortage has become the biggest challenge to tech adoption.
- AI and digital twin are two emerging technologies that are seeing heavy R&D investment by security leaders.
- The top three cyberthreats according to security leaders are phishing, third-party software risks, and ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS).
- The main skills lacking in the cybersecurity talent pool include proficiency in artificial intelligence/machine learning, cloud security, and cyberthreat intelligence.