New Cisco Study Finds Only 9% of Canadian Companies Surveyed are Ready to Defend Against Cybersecurity Threats

News Summary:

• Readiness is critical as 77% of respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months
• The cost of being unprepared can be substantial, as 51% of respondents said they had a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months, which cost 34% of organizations affected at least US $500,000
• Companies are taking action, as 78% respondents said their organizations plan to increase their cybersecurity budget by at least 10% over the next 12 months
  

TORONTO, March 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A mere 9% of organizations in Canada have the ‘Mature’ level of readiness needed to be resilient against today’s modern cybersecurity risks, according to Cisco’s NASDAQ: CSCO first-ever Cybersecurity Readiness Index released today. The index has been developed against the backdrop of a post-COVID, hybrid world, where users and data must be secured wherever work gets done. The report highlights where businesses are doing well and where cybersecurity readiness gaps will widen if global business and security leaders don’t take action.

Organizations have moved from an operating model that was largely static – where people operated from single devices from one location, connecting to a static network – to a hybrid world in which they increasingly operate from multiple devices in multiple locations, connect to multiple networks, access applications in the cloud and on the go, and generate enormous amount of data. This presents new and unique cybersecurity challenges for companies.

Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index: Resilience in a Hybrid World
The Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index: Resilience in a Hybrid World measures the readiness of companies to maintain cybersecurity resilience against modern threats. These measures cover five core pillars that form the baseline of required defences: identity, devices, network, application workloads, and data, and encompasses 19 different solutions within the pillars.

Conducted by an independent third-party, the double-blind survey asked 6,700 private sector cybersecurity leaders across 27 markets to indicate which of these solutions they had deployed and the stage of deployment. Companies were then classified into four stages of increasing readiness: Beginner, Formative, Progressive and Mature.

Findings
Alongside the stark finding that only 9% of Canadian organizations are at the Mature stage, 57% of organizations fall into the Beginner (9%) or Formative (48%) stages – meaning that their cybersecurity readiness is below average. Only 15% of companies globally are at a Mature stage.