Pak firms ‘71.3pc professionals apprehended risks of cybersecurity’

ISLAMABAD: A leading cyber security company disclosed Thursday that 71.3 percent professionals working in Pakistani companies apprehended risks of cybersecurity incidents during use of computers.

This was the result of a survey carried out by the cyber security company.

The survey was conducted by Toluna research agency at the request of Kaspersky in 2025.

The study sample included 2,800 online interviews with employees and business owners using computers for work in seven countries: Türkiye, South Africa, Kenya, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

One of the core reasons why businesses remain vulnerable to cyber threats is that they underestimate their risk or overestimate the strength of their existing defences.

According to a recent Kaspersky survey entitled “Cybersecurity in the workplace: Employee knowledge and behaviour”, 71.3 percent of professionals surveyed in Pakistan, whose work requires the use of computers, asses the risk of a cybersecurity incident happening to their company as quite possible.

Commenting on the probable consequences of a cybersecurity incident, 73.8 percent of employees surveyed supposed that it might seriously affect the company. This understanding of risks comes not only from general cybersecurity awareness, but also from knowledge about cyber incidents in their organizations: 53 percent of respondents acknowledged such incidents happened in the past 12 months, while an additional 19 percent said they have heard about these incidents from colleagues.

Organizations nowadays face a variety of cyber threats ranging from phishing and business email compromise to ransomware and advanced persistent threats. In a lot of these attacks, the entry point into the organization’s network is via a human mistake, and it is for that reason attackers actively employ social engineering techniques and AI tools to make their efforts more effective.

The survey shows that the majority of respondents understand that cybersecurity is an issue that should be considered by the IT department, while 23 percent also mentioned top level executives and 12.8 percent cited legal and financial employees as core groups within the business who should keep cybersecurity issues in mind. Only 37.8 percent of employees surveyed viewed cybersecurity as an issue that should be considered by all employees across the entire business.

To help organizations strengthen their defences, Kaspersky believes that employee education and cybersecurity training is necessary as human error is a common cause for cybersecurity breaches, the survey added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025