Are today's organizations ready to respond well to cyber attacks?

Security Intelligence firm FireEye has now released its Cyber Trendscape Report that states that 51% of organizations do not believe they are ready for or would respond well to a cyber-attack or breach. For this report, FireEye surveyed over 800 CISOs and other senior executives across North America, Europe, and Asia to uncover attitudes towards some of cyber security’s most prevalent topics. With the perpetually shifting threat landscape, over 90% of the organizations surveyed believe that the cyber threat landscape would stay the same or worsen in 2020. Further, 51% of organizations do not believe they are ready for or would respond well to a breach. Moreover, 29% of organizations with cyber-attack and breach response plans in place have not tested or updated them in the last 12 months. 

 “These critical data points will help organizations to bring focus and clarity to their cybersecurity programs while helping to expand the dialogue with senior leadership and the board,” stated Eric Ouellet who is Global Security Strategist at FireEye. This research study was commissioned by FireEye and delivered by Kantar, an independent market research organization. Results were derived from an online survey fielded in July-August 2019 for a total of over 800 responses spanning across North America (US and Canada), Europe (France, Germany and the UK) and Asia (China, Japan and South Korea). Setup questions were used to ensure that only cybersecurity executives were in the sample, which was defined as those at the C-level or above, Vice President, or Senior Director level.    

Vast majority of organizations set to increase cybersecurity budgets  

 Globally, organizations allocated their cybersecurity budgets into four main categories with the largest allocations going to the areas of prevention (42%) and detection (28%), followed by containment and remediation. However, Japan was the only country to break away from this order, expressing a greater emphasis on detection (40%) and then prevention (35%). Also, over 44% of global respondents expressed having transitioned some of their environment to the cloud, and that they were monitoring cautiously. Additionally, 35% had transitioned some of their environment with plans to continue, and 17% had completed a full cloud deployment. 

US organizations reported being furthest along in adopting a cloud-first approach with 37% having finished a complete cloud migration. Also, of the responding participants globally, 45% felt that the cloud was about as secure as on-premise, and a further 33% believed that the cloud was more secure. However, in both Germany and Japan, 24% of responding organizations perceived the cloud as being less secure – highlighting a disparity from the global average (18%).  [Main image credit: Pixabay].

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