Are You Ready to Respond to a Cyber Incident Quickly?

Despite 77 percent of companies suffering an incident in the past two years, over a third of firms (38 percent) still have no incident response plan in place should an incident occur, says a  survey Arbor Networks sponsored with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Only 17 percent of businesses globally are fully prepared for an online security incident.

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.

Incident resposne should become organizational relfex
“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 an 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.”

Preparedness is held back by lack of understanding about threats
Only 17 percent of business leaders feel fully prepared for an incident. Forty 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.  Two-thirds of executives say that responding effectively to an incident can enhance their firm’s reputation.

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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