More than half of organizations fall victim to cyberattacks

The latest Cybersecurity Readiness Index from Cisco shows that 53 percent of the respondents report falling victim to a cyber incident this past year, and many leaders (73 percent) believe that they will be a victim of a cybersecurity incident in the next 12-24 months.

The report shows that the level of readiness is down on a year ago too. Only three percent of organizations around the globe have a mature enough security posture to protect against today’s threats (down 12 percent compared to last year).

Unsecure and un-managed devices are adding complexity, with 85 percent of companies saying their employees access company platforms from un-managed devices. 43 percent of those spend 20 percent of their time logged onto company networks from un-managed devices. Additionally, 29 percent report that their employees hop between at least six networks over the course of a week.

There's still a cybersecurity talent shortage too, with 87 percent of companies highlighting it as an issue. In fact, 46 percent of companies say they had more than ten roles related to cybersecurity unfilled in their organization at the time of the survey.

"We cannot underestimate the threat posed by our own overconfidence," says Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco. "Today's organizations need to prioritize investments in integrated platforms and lean into AI in order to operate at machine scale and finally tip the scales in the favor of defenders."

Looking to the future, companies are aware of the challenge and are ramping up their defenses with 52 percent planning to significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure in the next one to two years. This is a marked increase from just 33 percent who planned to do so last year. Most prominently, organizations plan to upgrade existing solutions (66 percent), deploy new solutions (57 percent), and invest in AI-driven technologies (55 percent).

Also 97 percent of companies plan to increase their cybersecurity budget in the next 12 months, and 86 percent respondents say their budgets will increase by 10 percent or more.

The full report is available from the Cisco site.

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