New Ponemon Report: Too Many Organizations Don't Have a Plan to Respond to Incidents

When a cyberattack occurs, most organizations are unprepared and do not have a consistent incident response plan.

That’s the major takeaway from our third annual “Cyber Resilient Organization” study, conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The study revealed that 77 percent of respondents still lack a formal cybersecurity incident response plan (CSIRP) that is applied consistently across the organization, a figure that is largely unchanged from the previous year’s study.

Read the Ponemon Institute’s Third Annual Study on the Cyber Resilient Organization

Incident Response Preparedness Lags Despite Growing Confidence in Cyber Resilience

Despite this, organizations reported feeling much more cyber-resilient than they did last year. Seventy-two percent said as much, which is a notable increase from just over half of respondents who said they felt more cyber-resilient the previous year.

Digging deeper into the data, however, that feeling may not be accurate. The following findings from the Ponemon study paint a different picture:

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said the time to resolve an incident has increased.
Only 29 percent reported having the ideal staffing level.
Just 31 percent reported having the proper budget for cyber resilience.
Lack of investment in important tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning was ranked as the biggest barrier to cyber resilience.

Investing in Incident Response to Improve Cyber Resilience

It’s imperative that organizations address these challenges in 2018. Cyberattacks can have large costs associations, such as with WannaCry and NotPetya, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is quickly approaching. Not only do organizations lack a consistent incident response plan — a GDPR requirement — but most reported low levels of confidence in complying with GDPR.

Based on the findings of the Ponemon report, organizations can improve their cyber resilience by arming employees with the most modern tools available to aid their work, such as AI and machine learning. Implementing a strategy that orchestrates human intelligence with these tools can help organizations create effective incident response plans.

To learn more about the full results of the Ponemon report, download “The Third Annual Study on the Cyber Resilient Organization” and watch the on-demand webinar: “Growing Your Organization’s Cyber Resilience in 2018.”

Read the Ponemon Institute’s Third Annual Study on the Cyber Resilient Organization

Ted Julian

VP Product Management and Co-Founder of Resilient, IBM

What cybersecurity pros can learn from first responders

4 min read - Though they may initially seem very different, there are some compelling similarities between cybersecurity professionals and traditional first responders like police and EMTs. After all, in a world where a cyberattack on critical infrastructure could cause untold damage and harm, cyber responders must be ready for anything. But are they actually prepared? Compared to the readiness of traditional first responders, how do cybersecurity professionals in incident response stand up? Let’s dig deeper into whether the same sense of urgency exists…

X-Force uncovers global NetScaler Gateway credential harvesting campaign

6 min read - This post was made possible through the contributions of Bastien Lardy, Sebastiano Marinaccio and Ruben Castillo. In September of 2023, X-Force uncovered a campaign where attackers were exploiting the vulnerability identified in CVE-2023-3519 to attack unpatched NetScaler Gateways to insert a malicious script into the HTML content of the authentication web page to capture user credentials. The campaign is another example of increased interest from cyber criminals in credentials. The 2023 X-Force cloud threat report found that 67% of cloud-related…

Tequila OS 2.0: The first forensic Linux distribution in Latin America

3 min read - Incident response teams are stretched thin, and the threats are only intensifying. But new tools are helping bridge the gap for cybersecurity pros in Latin America. IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023 found that 12% of the security incidents X-force responded to were in Latin America. In comparison, 31% were in the Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe with 28%, North America with 25% and the Middle East with 4%. In the Latin American region, Brazil had 67% of incidents that…

Alert fatigue: A 911 cyber call center that never sleeps

4 min read - Imagine running a 911 call center where the switchboard is constantly lit up with incoming calls. The initial question, “What’s your emergency, please?” aims to funnel the event to the right responder for triage and assessment. Over the course of your shift, requests could range from soft-spoken “I’m having a heart attack” pleas to “Where’s my pizza?” freak-outs eating up important resources. Now add into the mix a volume of calls that burnout kicks in and important threats are missed.…

Security Intelligence

{{title}}

{{title}}

{{title}}

{{title}}

Topics

Incident Response Preparedness Lags Despite Growing Confidence in Cyber Resilience

Investing in Incident Response to Improve Cyber Resilience

More from Incident Response

What cybersecurity pros can learn from first responders

X-Force uncovers global NetScaler Gateway credential harvesting campaign

Tequila OS 2.0: The first forensic Linux distribution in Latin America

Alert fatigue: A 911 cyber call center that never sleeps

Topic updates