Organizations Prioritize Cybersecurity but are Dragged Down by Lack of Fundamentals

TAMPA, Fla. - EntSun -- Open XDR-as-a-Service leader ReliaQuest, in partnership with Ponemon Research, announced publication of a survey report detailing the needs of cybersecurity leaders in the United States & United Kingdom. "Making Security Possible and Achieving a Risk-oriented Security Posture," shows that organizations are prioritizing strategic security programs but missing the foundational capabilities they need to make meaningful changes to their security posture.

"This research offers insights into the priorities of security leaders, the day-to-day struggles they face and their ambition to support the business through change," said Ashok Sankar, Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing at ReliaQuest. "While it's positive to see more leaders engaging in strategic approaches to securing their organization, as they look to implement programs like Zero Trust – which can be a multi-year journey – it's important to keep their energy focused on the fundamentals of cybersecurity."

Security leaders are committed to a stronger risk-based security posture

57% of respondents prioritize securely migrating applications to the cloud.

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Almost half (49%) of security leaders enable DevSecOps best practices.
48% of organizations surveyed prioritize implementing Zero Trust principles as part of their security strategy.

Security teams are not aligned on security program

The primary obstacle to implementing an IT security risk management program is a lack of standardized metrics to measure progress (64%), followed by the lack of a risk management strategy and decision-making structure (58%).
58% of respondents say that the lack of a well-defined security and risk management program is what makes their organization most vulnerable to attacks, but only 31% consider developing a risk-reduction program a top security priority.
Only a third (37%) of those surveyed believe that their teams are tracking the right security metrics and that it is easy to communicate them to business executives and board members.
Only about half (49%) rate developing business goal–oriented metrics as one of the top priorities for the next year.

Security teams inhibited by operational inefficiencies

31% of respondents report their security staff spends at least 3 hours a day manually administering and managing (optimization, writing rules, integrating) tools.

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The majority (57%) of organizations have one staff member managing more than four tools in their organizations. Only 17% have one staff member assigned to manage a single tool.
52% agree that their team is spending too much time on data collection activities instead of threat detection and analysis.

Poor enterprise-wide visibility

Only 13% say they have more than 75% visibility across all security tools, including on-premises and the cloud. 69% believe they have less than 50% visibility across all security tools, including on-premises and the cloud.
Only about one-third (36%) say they are measuring visibility across environment, including on-premises and the cloud.

Download report (https://www.reliaquest.com/ponemon-institute-research-report/) or register (https://onlinexperiences.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!10100&ShowUUID=27493DA0-60F5-4EE7-ACAE-0D7E70561305&referrer=Reliaquesta) for webinar.