Security report: on-premises offerings are experiencing a renaissance

European companies are facing an increasingly tense threat situation. This is according to the "State of Cybersecurity Report 2025" by French security provider HarfangLab. According to the report, 40% of the companies surveyed in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium rate the current IT risk to their organization as "extremely" or "very high". 58% consider the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by criminals to be the most important risk factor.

A key finding of the report is the growing importance of digital sovereignty. 70 percent of companies feel that they are too dependent on non-European technology. 78% of decision-makers in Europe state that the issue of sovereignty has become more important to them. For 59 percent, this is now a decisive purchasing criterion, and 11 percent even see digital sovereignty as the most important.

According to the report (PDF), on-premises offerings are experiencing a small renaissance. According to the report, 31% of companies prefer local endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems to cloud offerings –, primarily in order to retain more control over their own IT security. Although the proportion of cloud-based systems is even higher at 35%, around 17% of companies are explicitly planning to switch to an on-premises solution in the next two years.

Despite all attempts to move customers to the cloud, Microsoft still offers on-premises servers. Most recently, the company continued to release locally installable servers with the Microsoft Exchange Server Subscription Edition and the Skype Business Server Subscription Edition. However, the company charges a premium for this.

The differences in risk perception are significant in some regions: in France, 48% of companies rated the risk as extremely or very high, in Germany only 33%.

Data leaks are seen as the greatest threat – 53% of respondents fear the loss of sensitive information. Other concerns include the destruction of systems (40 percent), espionage (36 percent), ransomware attacks (35 percent), financial losses (33 percent) and production downtime (30 percent). Complex IT infrastructures, the growing shortage of specialists – especially in Germany and Belgium – and the high number of endpoints further exacerbate the situation.

The willingness to switch providers is high: around 70% of European companies are considering switching to European providers. In addition to digital sovereignty, compliance (76%) and knowledge of the regional threat situation (81%) also play a key role. Other selection criteria include flexible deployment options (29%), proven performance (25%) and regional support (21%).

Room for improvement in the implementation of security strategies

However, many companies are not yet able to implement effective security strategies. Although 69 percent feel well prepared for prevention, only 65 percent feel able to respond appropriately to incidents – a decrease compared to the previous year. The report cites a lack of resources, staff shortages, complex infrastructures and fragmented protection solutions as the reasons for this.

Geopolitical conflicts, regulatory requirements such as NIS2 and increasing networking with third parties pose additional challenges. Despite all the pressures, 94% of respondents are in favor of European ICT security regulations, 58% of whom even consider them "absolutely necessary".

The report is based on a study conducted by Sapio Research on behalf of HarfangLab. In Q2 2025, over 800 IT security decision-makers from France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands were surveyed. The companies represented industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, technology and public services and employed between 300 and 5,000 people.

(mack)