Over 75% of global institutions anticipate a successful cyber attack within a year Over 75% of global institutions anticipate a successful cyber attack within a year
Trend Micro's latest report revealed the cyber-risk levels improved to moderate from elevated for the first time in the second half of 2022.
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Updated: May. 4, 2023 at 4:08 pm UTC
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Around 78% of organizations worldwide expect a successful cyber attack to occur in the next 12 months, according to cybersecurity company Trend Micro’s latest report.
This rate is especially surprising considering the report also calculated the cyber risk level to be improved to moderate from elevated for the first time, the May 4 Trend Micro report stated.
Expecting attacks
The report surveyed IT security professionals from over 3500 institutions from all around the world. Out of all participants, 78% said they anticipated a successful cyberattack within 12 months. Even though it remains high despite the improving global cyber risk, this percentage marks a 7% decrease from the first half of 2022.
Around 70% of the participants said they would likely experience a breach in customer data in the next 12 months. Another 69% said it was possible to see a data breach of critical data in the following year.
Global cyber risk is improving
Trend Micro calculates the global cyber risk based on the metric they developed — the Cyber Risk Index (CRI). The CRI scale ranges from -10 to +10 — with -10 representing the highest risk and +10 indicating the safest landscape.
The CRI is composed of the cyber preparedness index and the cyber threat index. The first one represents an organization’s at-hand capacity to defend against cyber attacks, while the latter measures the state of the cyber threat at the time of calculation.
According to the report, the CRI index improved to “moderate” from “elevated risk” for the first time since Trend Micro started publishing these reports. Moreover, it is also the first time the CRI score appeared on the positive side of the scale with +0.01. This score was at -0.15 in the first half of 2022.
Trend Micro’s Vice President of threat intelligence, Jon Clay, commented on these findings by stating:
“For the first time since we’ve been running these surveys, we saw the global cyber-risk index not only improve but move into positive territory at +0.01.
It means that organizations may be taking steps to improve their cyber-preparedness.”
Breaking down the CRI score based on the regions, Europe and Asia-Pacific were placed on the positive side of the scale with +0.12 and +0.05, respectively.
Meanwhile, North America and Latin/South America were in the negatives with -0.10 and -0.03, respectively.
Author 
Zeynep Geylan
Zeynep is an academic who turned to crypto in 2018. Originating in social sciences, she is especially interested in the social impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies and strongly believes in their transmuting power.
