The levels of cyber security confidence amongst European organisations is growing, according to a new survey, with 68 per cent seeing themselves as vulnerable - down from 86 per cent in 2018 - despite 52 per cent having experience a breach or failed a compliance audit in the previous year.

A new data threat report by Thales found that a fifth of organisations intend to reduce spending on data security in the coming year, despite the rising threat from COVID-19, with remote working significantly increasing risk to sensitive data.

On a country-by-country basis, the report found that 48 per cent of companies had experienced a data breach, with 29 per cent of those occurring in the past year.

In addition, 66 per cent UK organisations see quantum computing affecting their cryptographic operations in the next five years.

On a European level, companies are racing to digitally transform and move more applications and data to the cloud; 37 per cent of European countries stated they are aggressively disrupting the markets they participate in, or embedding digital capabilities to enable greater enterprise agility.

A key aspect of this transformation is in the cloud becoming the leading data environment. Nearly half (46 per cent) of all data stored by European organisations is now stored in the cloud, the survey found, with 43 per cent of that data being described as sensitive.

All of the businesses surveyed reported that at least some of the sensitive data they are storing in the cloud is not encrypted. Only 54 per cent of sensitive data in the cloud is protected by encryption and even less (44 per cent) is protected by tokenisation, highlighting the disconnect between the level of investment companies are making into cyber security and the increasing threats they face.

Chris Harris, EMEA technical director at Thales, said: “UK organisations are leading the way when it comes to digital transformation, with the majority either aggressively disrupting their markets or embedding digital capabilities - but while there’s a huge sense of optimism amongst UK organisations as they continue to take strides forward when it comes to digital transformation, the reality is that they are still experiencing breaches at a similar rate to their EU counterparts.

“This makes it imperative that the UK doesn’t fall victim to a false sense of security, and continues to strengthen its cybersecurity offering, particularly with the greater threat posed by quantum computing being just around the corner.”

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