According to new research from Cisco, only 2% of organizations in the UK are adequately resilient to current cybersecurity risks, worse than even the global figure of 3%.
Almost three quarters of UK organizations belong to the group Beginner either Formative stages of preparation for cybersecurity, according to an analysis by the technology giant, and only one in fifty achieves the required requirements Ripe level.
96% of companies said they expect to increase cybersecurity budgets in the next 12 months, seven in ten said a security incident is likely to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months.
Meanwhile, 54% of respondents said they had experienced a cybersecurity incident in the past 12 months, and just over half of those affected said it cost them at least $300,000.
But with 78% of companies saying they are moderately to very confident in their ability to defend against a cyberattack with their current infrastructure, Cisco suggested that companies may be too confident and unable to assess the true scale of the challenges. That they face.
“We cannot underestimate the threat posed by our own overconfidence,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco.
“Organizations today must prioritize investments in integrated platforms and lean on AI to operate at machine scale and ultimately tip the scales in favor of defenders.”
The traditional approach of adopting multiple cybersecurity point solutions has not been particularly effective, according to the report, with three-quarters of respondents admitting that it slowed down their team's ability to detect, respond and recover from incidents.
And this is a particular concern, Cisco said, as 69% of organizations revealed that they have implemented ten or more point solutions in their security stacks, while 29% said they have 30 or more.
Meanwhile, eight in ten companies said their employees access company platforms from unmanaged devices, and 40% of them spend a fifth of their time connected to company networks from unmanaged devices.
Another quarter reported that their employees hop between at least six networks for a week.
And progress is further slowed by the critical talent shortage, with 85% of companies highlighting it as a problem; in fact, four in ten said they had more than ten cybersecurity-related roles open in their organization at the time of the survey.
The good news is that nearly half of organizations plan to significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure in the next 12 to 24 months, up from 31% last year.
Highlights are that seven in ten plan to upgrade existing solutions, six in ten implement new solutions and 55% invest in AI-powered technologies. Almost everyone expects to increase their cybersecurity budget in the next 12 months, with 82% saying their budgets will increase by 10% or more.
