Vulcan Cyber announced the latest results of its ongoing research into vulnerability risk management initiatives and risk impact on business operations. The survey finds 75% of organizations have dedicated threat intelligence teams and two-thirds have dedicated threat intelligence budgets. Despite this, 73% of respondents indicated a "lack of skills" is their biggest threat intelligence challenge and is keeping organizations from fully leveraging investments in threat intelligence resources. Fifty-five percent of respondents identified threat intelligence as not being sufficiently predictive to keep cyber teams ahead of threat actors. 

Conducted by Gartner Pulse, the latest Vulcan Cyber vulnerability management survey examines the effectiveness of threat intelligence sources as part of an integrated cyber risk and vulnerability management program designed to reduce risk and improve cyber hygiene. According to the latest survey, threat intelligence is clearly a crucial source for ongoing vulnerability detection and prioritization. In fact, 87% of decision makers rely on threat intelligence "often or very often" for vulnerability prioritization. More than 90% of organizations rate their ability to respond based on threat intelligence as average or better.

"It is good that we're seeing such extensive adoption of threat intelligence feeds by so many different types of cyber teams," said Yaniv Bar-Dayan, CEO and co-founder, Vulcan Cyber. "It's even more encouraging to see the share of organizations that have dedicated teams and budgets to act upon those findings. Nonetheless, a concerted effort to scale our ability to respond with precision will be correspondingly more crucial as cloud-native environments grow more complex. Teams don't just need tools and people, they need skills and the ability to use the tools at their disposal to improve the security posture of their organizations."

Other key findings from the Vulcan Cyber survey include:

• Threat intelligence adoption is on the rise, as more companies have dedicated teams (75%) and budgets (66%) in place.
• Organizations are using threat intelligence on an ongoing and frequent basis with 75% of respondents use threat intelligence at least weekly.
• Threat intelligence is used in a variety of ways, but still primarily for "traditional cybersecurity" like blocking bad IPs.
• Seventy-three percent of managers indicate that a lack of skills to leverage threat intelligence is a key problem. 
• Fifty-five percent of respondents said their threat intelligence data is not predictive enough.
  

For the complete results of the Vulcan Cyber threat intelligence survey, download the infographic, "Threat Intelligence Adoption Rises to Reduce Vulnerability Risk."