Cybersecurity Readiness Index: in Italy the majority of companies are defenseless in the face of cyber attacks and fear of being a victim with consequent business interruption. In fact, only 7% believe they are capable of defending themselves against an IT attack, against 15% globally. The report made for the first time by Cisco wants to measure the preparedness and resilience of companies against cybercrime.
Four stages of preparation
To create the Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index 2023, 5 pillars were taken as measurement criteria, which constitute the main line of defense of a company. That is Identity, Devices, Network Security, Application Workloads, Data. Each of them in turn comprises 19 different solutions.
In many defenseless in the face of cyber attacks
The survey was conducted on a sample of 6,700 professionals from 27 countries, including Italy, who work in the field of cybersecurity. You have been asked to indicate which are the solutions adopted so far and what is their current status. At the end of the survey, the companies were classified into 4 stages of preparation: Beginner, Training, Progressive, Mature.
- In Italy, only 7% of companies are in the Mature stage, while 8% are still in the Beginner stage and 61% in the Training stage. Therefore a much lower than average preparation in cybersecurity. Globally however, companies in a mature stage are 15%.
- Furthermore, 75% of respondents expect their business to be disrupted in the next 12-24 months due to a cyber attack. On the other hand, 31% declared that they had suffered one in the last year.
- Finally, being unprepared can be costly. 25% of affected companies had to spend at least $500,000 to regain control of their business. As a result, 87% expect to increase their security budget by at least 10% in the next 12 months.
Bridging the preparedness gap, Italian companies defenseless in the face of cyber attacks
Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President & General Manager of Security And Collaboration at Cisco.
The biggest mistake companies make is to defend themselves against cyber attacks using a mix of tools. Instead, it is necessary to consider integrated platforms, thanks to which companies can achieve a sufficient degree of resilience. At the same time, this fills their cybersecurity preparedness gap.
The 5 pillars of cybersecurity:
- Identity: it is necessary to do progress in this context, since only 13% of companies are classified as “Mature”.
- Devices: The highest percentage of companies in the Mature stage is 20%.
- Network security: companies are in delay on this front, with 72% of respondents being in the Initial or Training stage.
- Application Workloads: This is the area where companies are least prepared, with 80% being in the Initial or Training phase.
- Data: second place for number of companies in the mature phase (14%).