Enterprises struggle with serious gaps in cyber response plans

A new survey of 1,000 businesses across the UK, UK, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region reveals a worrying disconnect between organizations' perceived readiness and actual performance in cyber crisis response.

The study for Semperis, with research from Censuswide, finds 90 percent of enterprises surveyed struggle with serious blockers to effective cyber response. Top issues include cross-team communication gaps (48 percent), out-of-date response plans (45 percent) and unclear roles and responsibilities (41 percent).

Globally 96 percent of companies say they have a cyber crisis response plan and 90 percent have activated their enterprise crisis response plan at least once in the past year -- some more than 25 times.

Yet despite plans and practice, 71 percent still experienced at least one high-impact cyber incident that disrupted critical business functions in the past year, while 36 percent suffered multiple damaging incidents.

Although tabletop exercises are carried out they often lack input from key cross-team stakeholders and decision makers. Less than half of respondents are conducting tabletops that include all the teams commonly involved in an actual crisis.

"In today's cyber threat landscape, the ability to respond swiftly and decisively is just as critical as prevention," says Chris Inglis, the first US National Cyber Director and Semperis strategic advisor. "Companies need a command centre for crisis management, ensuring organizations have the playbook, the training and the coordination needed to turn chaos into control."

The research coincides with the launch of Semperis Ready1, an enterprise resilience platform designed to bring structure, speed and coordination to cyber crisis management.

Ready1 offers a single secure platform, designed to ensure seamless crisis response through preparation, collaboration and enterprise-wide communications. On average, enterprises use more than 20 disparate tools for cyber crisis response. Ready1 consolidates fragmented crisis management, IR, downtime planning and communication tools into one, secure, intuitive platform that's designed to work even if everything else fails.

You can get the full report on the Semperis site and find out more about Ready1.

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