A new study commissioned by Google Cloud has revealed that security professionals are drowning in threat intelligence data, with 61 percent of organisations reporting their teams are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information they must process. The research, conducted by Forrester Consulting, surveyed 1,541 director-level and above technology professionals from companies with at least 1,000 employees across 12 industries and eight countries, highlighting a critical paradox where more security data is actually making organisations less secure rather than better protected.
The findings reveal a staffing crisis that compounds the data overload problem, with 60 percent of respondents stating they lack sufficient skilled security personnel to analyse the avalanche of threat intelligence feeds. This shortage creates a dangerous cycle where 59 percent struggle to verify the validity and relevance of threats, while an equal percentage find it difficult to make the data actionable. The overwhelming nature of these challenges has forced 72 percent of organizations into a predominantly reactive cybersecurity posture, abandoning proactive threat hunting and prevention strategies that could better protect their digital assets.
Manufacturing emerged as the industry most concerned about missing real threats due to information overload, with 89 percent expressing significant worry about their ability to distinguish genuine dangers from noise. This concern is well-founded given that ransomware groups targeted manufacturing with 218 reported infections last year, making it the second most attacked critical infrastructure sector according to FBI data. The study recommends that security leaders reframe threat intelligence as a capability rather than merely a data feed, emphasizing the need for skilled analysis, contextualisation, and alignment with real-world business threats rather than simply consuming more raw intelligence data without proper processing frameworks.