This report claims to have found the seven keys to a secure business
A new report of 4,700 cybersecurity leaders from 26 countries has revealed what makes for a successful security posture for businesses, according to the report.
In the third part of its Security Outcomes Report, Cisco focused on the impact of cultural, environmental, and solution factors on security, identifying seven key factors that strengthen corporate cybersecurity.
The survey also examined the most common security threats faced by businesses, with nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents admitting to having experienced a “security event” that negatively impacted their business.
Seven factors
The most commonly cited types of such incidents were network and data breaches, system failures, ransomware and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
The top ways these companies were impacted were disrupting IT communications (62.6%), disrupting the supply chain (43%), hindering internal operations (41.4%), and negatively impacting of the brand image (39.7%).
When scoring companies on their resilience to attacks, Cisco identified seven factors used by those in the top 90th percentile. On the other hand, those who didn’t have them were in the bottom 10th percentile.
The first three factors relate to leadership, company culture and resources. Unsurprisingly, those with a good overall security culture scored 46% higher than those without, and organizations with poor C-suite support scored 39% lower than those with good support.
Companies that had more staff and resources to deal with security events also performed 15% better.
The fourth factor concerns the transition to cloud computing, which companies are increasingly using. Those firmly entrenched in physical or cloud-based IT were almost identical in their high resilience scores. However, those who began the transition from on-premises to cloud computing were most at risk, with scores dropping by as much as 14%.
The last three factors concern the use of advanced security solutions. Companies that adopted zero-trust systems saw a 30% increase in resilience scores, and those that prepared for security threats with advanced detection and response protocols had a massive 45% increase. Those using cloud-based security for their transition to hybrid working also saw a 27% increase in scores.
