Cybersecurity resilience emerges as top priority for Malaysian organisations: Cisco

• Ransomware tops the security incidents list and stands at 57%
• 80% of businesses encountered a security event that impacted business in the past 2 years 

Cybersecurity resilience is a top priority for companies in Malaysia as they look to defend against a rapidly evolving threat landscape, with 80% of organisations surveyed having experienced a security event that impacted business in the past two years.

This is according to the latest edition of Cisco’s annual study, titled ‘Security Outcomes Report, Volume 3: Achieving Security Resilience’. In a statement, the technology firm said the study identifies the top seven success factors that boost enterprise security resilience, with a particular focus on cultural, environmental, and solution-based factors that businesses leverage to achieve security. 

It said the findings are based on survey responses from over 4,700 participants across 26 countries.

According to the study, resilience emerged as a top priority,  while other leading types of incidents were ransomware events (57%), accidental disclosure (53%), distributed denial of service attack (51%), and network or data breaches (48%).

These incidents resulted in severe repercussions for the companies that experienced them, along with the ecosystem of organisations they do business with, it added. 

Additionally, the leading impacts cited include IT/communications interruption, lasting brand damage, loss of competitive advantage, and supply chain disruptions, the survey stated. 

With stakes this high, it is no surprise that 96% of executives surveyed for the report said that security resilience is a top priority for them. 

The findings further highlight that the main objectives of security resilience for security leaders and their teams are to adapt to unexpected external change events or trends, mitigate financial losses from security incidents, and keep up with the demands and growth of the business.

Helen Patton (pic, left), CISO, Cisco Business Security Group, Cisco said technology is transforming businesses at a scale and speed never seen before. 

“While this is creating new opportunities, it also brings with it challenges, especially on the security front,” she added

“Therefore, to be able to tackle these effectively, companies need the ability to anticipate, identify, and withstand cyber threats, and if breached be able to rapidly recover from one,” Patton said. 

She added that security, after all, is a risk business. 

“As companies don’t secure everything, everywhere, security resilience allows them to focus their security resources on the pieces of the business that add the most value to an organization, and ensure that value is protected,” she said.

According to Cisco, this year’s report has developed a methodology to generate a security resilience score for the organisations surveyed and identify seven data-backed success factors. 

It said globally, organisations that had these factors present were among the top 90th percentile of resilient businesses. Conversely, those lacking these were placed in the bottom 10th percentile of performers, it added.

The findings of the study underline the fact that security is a human endeavor as leadership, company culture and resourcing have a significant impact on resilience:

• Globally, organisations that report poor security support from the C-suite scored 39% lower than those with strong executive support.
• Businesses that report an excellent security culture scored 46% higher on average than those without.
• Companies that maintain extra internal staffing and resources to respond to incidents resulted in a 15% boost in resilient outcomes.

In addition, businesses need to take care to reduce complexity when transitioning from on-premise to fully cloud-based environments:

• Companies whose technology infrastructures are either mostly on-premise or mostly cloud-based had the highest, and nearly identical, security resilience scores. However, businesses that are in the initial stages of transitioning from an on-premise to a hybrid cloud environment saw scores drop between 8.5 and 14% depending on how difficult the hybrid environments were to manage.

Finally, adopting and maturing advanced security solutions has significant impacts on resilient outcomes:

• Globally, companies that reported implementing a mature Zero Trust model saw a 30% increase in resilience score compared to those that had none.
• Advanced extended detection and response capabilities correlated to an incredible 45% increase for organizations over those that report having no detection and response solutions.
• Converging networking and security into a mature, cloud-delivered secure access services edge boosted security resilience scores by 27%.

“The Security Outcomes Reports are a study into what works and what doesn’t in cybersecurity, said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco 

“The ultimate goal is to cut through the noise in the market by identifying practices that lead to more secure outcomes for defenders,” he added. 

“This year, we focus on identifying the key factors that elevate the security resilience of a business to among the very best in the industry,” Patel said. 

Click here to download the report.