Ninety percent of senior security executives around the world indicate their organization is vulnerable to data threats, according to a 451 Research report published on Thursday.

What’s more, the report published in conjunction with security specialist Vormetric, found that 61 percent of participants have had a data breach in the past, with nearly one in five indicating that breach happened during the last year.

[Also: Healthcare.gov hit with 316 security incidents]

Approximately 75 percent of survey respondents said that cybercriminals are the top threat, while 47 percent pointed to nation-state hackers.

And while more than half intend to increase security spending, respondents also said that skill shortages and budgets as top barriers to adoption of better data security at 44 percent and 43 percent, respectively. 

"Federal IT Security professionals are like generals fighting today's wars with the weapons of yesterday," 451 Research senior analyst Garrett Bekker said in a statement. "Spending intentions reflected a tendency to stick with what has worked in the past, such as network and endpoint security technologies that offer little help in defending against multi-stage attacks. Clearly, there's still a big disconnect between what we are spending most of our security budget on and what's needed to ensure that our sensitive data remains secure."

The report is based on responses from 1,100 senior executives at large enterprises around the world, and it includes more than 100 in the U.S. federal government.

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