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More Australian entities are spending time responding to cyber incidents than they are proactively stopping them, a new survey has found.
The numbers come from a report released today (31 October) by security company Tenable, called Old Habits Die Hard: How People, Process and Technology Challenges Are Hurting Cybersecurity Teams in Australia.
According to the report, the burden of facing constant cyber attacks is holding back many organisations from properly addressing the broader threat landscape. Fifty-six per cent of Australian respondents – all cyber security professionals – to the global survey said they spend most of their time addressing critical cyber security incidents.
Additionally, three-quarters of those surveyed felt under-resourced when it comes to being proactive with their security posture. More alarming still, Australian organisations have stopped only 58 per cent of cyber attacks aimed at them over the last two years.
The maturity level of an organisation also has an impact on the ability to stay ahead of threats. Organisations further along their cyber security maturity path spend less time on reports for their bosses and also make better use of data aggregation to manage their exposure to risk. Organisations that rank lower in their maturity journey are less likely to prevent attacks and, therefore, spend more time on reactive mitigation.
The report paints a picture of an industry under extreme strain, unable to step away from the pace of critical incidents and take time to look ahead. At the same time, a proliferation of tools and fragmentation of security teams is also causing headaches, according to Scott McKinnel, country manager at Tenable ANZ.
“Internal mindsets further complicate matters and make collaboration between IT and security teams challenging,” McKinnel said in a statement. “The findings show that 48 per cent believe coordination between these teams is difficult, while 62 per cent highlight IT is more concerned with system uptime over patching and remediation.”
The report also highlights the challenge of dealing with third-party IT services. Sixty-five per cent of organisations use such services, but only 46 per cent have “high and very high visibility” into that supply chain.
The survey was run by Forrester Consulting and spoke to 825 security professionals from large organisations from Australia, the UK, Germany, France, Mexico, India, Brazil, Japan, and Saudi Arabia.
One hundred Australians were spoken to for the Australian edition of the report.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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