Today’s businesses face a wide range of cybersecurity threats.  While many are confident in their approach to protecting sensitive information, the reality is that security solutions still remain largely inadequate. According to a recent study from the Ponemon Institute, managing security investments and policies is a C-suite concern at 66 percent of companies. However, the amount of information that is actually passed to the C-suite to make informed decisions is “disturbingly incomplete,” with IT staff actively omitting negatives in more than half of cases.

“What is most concerning is that it would seem security in many organizations is based on perception and ‘gut feel,’ versus hard data,” said study author Larry Ponemon. “The stakeholders with the highest responsibility seem to be the least informed: a view that is amplified externally.”

For businesses, this may mean working with managed service providers that actually have an interest in meeting security needs rather than simply attracting as many clients as possible. A recent TechRadar article noted that concerns over staying on top of security needs appear to be driving many companies to avoid large cloud providers in favor of smaller managed services and colocation firms, where businesses can be aware of where specifically their data resides even as they leverage the benefits of virtualization and cloud infrastructure.