The company Kyndryl has released the global Cyber Gauge 2024 survey, and the results show a disconnect between perceived and actual cybersecurity readiness among companies worldwide. This ultimately translates into the need to create more robust cyber resilience strategies to protect them against threats.
Despite 94% of organizations feeling prepared to mitigate cyber attacks, 71% believe it is likely they will experience a disruptive incident in the next year that will impact their economic results. This disconnect underscores the need to improve awareness and measures to handle sophisticated cyber threats.
The study’s conclusions highlight the challenges organizations face regarding various cyber threats:
– Constantly evolving threat landscape: 52% of IT leaders face operational challenges, such as preparing for emerging threats like generative artificial intelligence attacks and state-sponsored attacks. Protecting hybrid cloud environments (47%) and managing the complexity of operating multiple security solutions (42%) are also top concerns.
– High frequency of attacks: Over the past year, 54% of large organizations reported experiencing a cyber attack that disrupted their computer systems or data. Of these, 61% have experienced four or more attacks, with Germany (71%), Canada (60%), and India (56%) being the three most affected countries.
– Insufficient executive support: A significant 69% state that business leaders do not support necessary security measures. An even greater percentage, 73%, indicates that executives are not interested in security preparedness.
– Lack of alignment in regulatory preparedness: Although 94% are confident in handling changing regulatory dynamics as regulatory pressures continue to increase on organizations to improve overall cyber resilience, 77% struggle with security and team alignment to mitigate other risks, and 72% lack clear business continuity roadmaps.
Organizational constraints: 54% of organizations say remote work continues to pressure their security teams, while cybersecurity budget constraints (43%) and security skills shortages (43%) are also among the main challenges.
Industry-specific challenges: The retail (61%), manufacturing (57%), and chemical, oil, and gas sectors (56%) report the highest incidence of cyber attacks. Government organizations have experienced the highest frequency, with 74% reporting four or more attacks.
“The study results reveal a complex landscape of cyber threats where businesses face persistent threats despite feeling prepared,” says Kris Lovejoy, Kyndryl’s Security and Resilience lead. “With over half of organizations experiencing disruptive incidents in the past year, it is imperative that companies make cyber resilience a priority. Achieving this is not a one-time effort but a continuous commitment to safeguarding our digital future.”
For organizations looking to bridge the gap between perceived and actual cyber readiness and enhance their preparedness for the current evolving threat landscape, Kyndryl and AWS have announced a new managed threat intelligence service, Kyndyrl Threat Insights. The service centralizes an organization’s security data from all their Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments to provide visibility and drive better identification, mitigation, and response to sophisticated cybersecurity risks.