KnowBe4 has announced the release of the 2020 Security Culture Report.
The report, published in collaboration with CLTRe, collected data from more than 120,000 employees across 24 countries to find out how deeply security was embedded into company culture or not.
South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, US, UK, New Zealand, Norway and India were some of the countries included in the survey.
The industries included banking, financial services, insurance, education, transport, and energy and utilities.
The security report was developed by CLTRe, a research organisation that was acquired by KnowBe4 to enhance its ability to understand how organisations were threatened by a lack of information.
The overall security culture scores were measured across seven dimensions that included attitudes, behaviours, cognition, communication, compliance, norms and responsibilities.
These were then further analysed against country and industry sector to provide a holistic global security overview.
“Asia has the highest security culture score, followed by the United Kingdom,” said Anna Collard, SVP of Content Strategy and Evangelist, KnowBe4 Africa. “The continent of Africa is on par with North America, Australia and New Zealand at 73 and leading ahead of Europe at 69.”
Collard added that the higher score could be because Africa leapfrogged legacy issues that “plague” some of the security environments in Europe.
She explained further, “It may also be explained by the fact that about 90 per cent of the African participants are from South African financial institutions. South Africa is a country where security and risk behaviour is ingrained in people’s daily lives and the financial services sector is ahead of other sectors when it comes to digital security attitudes and behaviours.
“While Africa isn’t quite as compliant as the USA overall, our results show a more positive attitude, norms and behaviour towards securing information. However, where Africa – and the rest of the world – is struggling is in education. This sector scored particularly badly with communication policies, attitudes and cognition, which is linked to learning. It’s an area that we have to become aware of, as it puts students and educators at risk.”
The report noted that the human element “is underserved,” disclosing that the culture of an organisation can significantly affect its security and by understanding the various factors that influence this culture and how it can be remedied, the organisation can change its security.
