Arbor Networks, Inc., a leading provider of DDoS and advanced threat protection solutions for enterprise and service provider networks, today announced the results of a survey it sponsored with the Economist Intelligence Unit on the issue of incident response preparedness. The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 360 senior business leaders, the majority of whom (73%) are C-level management or board members from across the world, including the Middle East.
The report entitled “Cyber incident response: Are business leaders ready?” shows that despite 76 percent of companies suffering an incident in the past two years, over a third of firms (39 percent) still have no incident response plan in place should an incident occur. Only 17 percent of businesses globally are fully prepared for an online security incident.
Mahmoud Samy, Area Head, Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan at Arbor Networks says, “Middle East enterprises are increasingly experiencing data breaches, denial of service attacks, systems errors and outages, having a significant impact in terms of business disruption, financial losses and loss of reputation. Regional organizations are waking up to the fact that they need to manage these data-related incidents more effectively by having response plans, technology and systems in place to guard against potential internal and external threats.”
More prepared firms that do have a response plan in place typically rely on the IT department to lead this process, but the majority also draw upon external resources – primarily IT forensic experts, specialist legal advisers and law enforcement experts.
“There is an encouraging trend towards formalizing corporate incident response preparations. But with the source and impact of threats becoming harder to predict, executives should make sure that incident response becomes an organizational reflex rather than just a plan pulled down off the shelf,” said James Chambers, a senior editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit.
Arbor Networks President Matthew Moynahan added, “As these findings show, when it comes to cyber-attacks, we live in a “when” not “if” world. In the wake of recent high profile targeted attacks in the retail sector, a company’s ability to quickly identify and classify and incident, and execute a response plan, is critical to not only protecting corporate assets and customer data, but the brand, reputation and bottom line of the company.
Key findings:
Level of preparedness is being held back by lack of understanding about threats
- Only 17 percent of business leaders feel fully prepared for an incident.
- 40 percent of business leaders feel a better understanding of potential threats would help them be better prepared.
- Having a formal plan or team in place has a significant effect on feeling of preparedness among executives.
- Half of all companies feel that they are unable to predict the business impact when a breach occurs.
Emphasis on reputation is driving formalisation of plans and processes
- Two-thirds of executives say that responding effectively to an incident can enhance their firm’s reputation.
- The percentage of organisations that now have an incident response team and plan in place is set to rise above 80 percent in the next few years.
- Firms that have suffered an incident in the past 12 months are twice as likely to have an arrangement with a third party expert as firms that have not suffered an incident.
Firms remain reticent about disclosing incidents and sharing intelligence about threats
- 57 percent of organisations do not voluntarily report incidents where they are not legally required to do so.
- Only a third of companies share information about incidents with other organisations to spread best practice and benchmark their own response.
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