80 percent of IT leaders overestimate cybersecurity readiness
A new study from WanAware shows a widening disconnect between how prepared organizations believe they are for cybersecurity incidents and how they actually perform under real-world conditions.
The survey of 600 leaders across industries finds 80 percent of cybersecurity and IT decision-makers claim they can detect and contain a cyber incident in under eight hours. However, external benchmarks, including IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2025 report, show attackers dwell inside environments undetected for an average of 181 days and breaches take 60 days to contain.
“Organizations aren’t struggling because they lack tools,” says Jeff Collins, CEO of WanAware. “They’re struggling because they lack clarity, trust in automation, and unified visibility. Security leaders believe they’re responding quickly, but the data shows attackers spend weeks or months inside environments before anyone knows they’re there. That perception gap is costing billions.”
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There’s also a disconnect between management and those at the sharp end. The report finds that IT and network leaders consistently rate their visibility, automation, and investigation capabilities far higher than analysts and engineers, the teams closest to incidents. IT managers report 65 percent net confidence in cyber readiness, while analysts report just 19 percent, pointing to a blind spot that impacts response speed, resource allocation, and risk posture.
Automation adds yet another layer of illusion. While more than 80 percent of leaders say they deploy automated actions with guardrails, fewer than 60 percent of analysts agree, and as many as 21 percent still rely on manual response. Automation exists on paper, but trust in automation lags behind, slowing the time taken to act.
“This confidence illusion, the belief that tools alone equal protection, explains why meaningfully reducing breach costs remains elusive despite AI adoption accelerating across the cybersecurity stack,” adds Collins.
The full report is available from the WanAware site.
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