Only 1% of PH firms 'mature' enough against cybersecurity risks - survey

Only 1% of Philippine organizations have the readiness level needed to be resilient against modern cybersecurity risks, according to the 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index released by global technology firm Cisco.

The latest figure reflects a decline from 27% of “mature” organizations in the past year and is lower than the global average of 3%, with the majority or 64% of organizations falling into the “beginner” or “formative” stages of readiness.

Organizations were classified as beginner, formative, progress, and mature, based on a double-blind survey of over 8,000 private sector security and business leaders across 30 global markets.

“The threat landscape is more complicated than ever and organizations globally including those in the Philippines continue to lag in their cyber resilience,” Cisco Philippines managing director Zaza Soriano-Nicart said in an emailed statement.

“Companies need to adopt a platform approach that will provide a simple, secure, single pane of glass view into their entire architecture to strengthen their security posture and best take advantage of the opportunities that come with emerging technologies,” she added.

The same report found that 67% of respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident in the next one to two years, with 59% saying they experienced such incidents in the last 12 months, and 36% saying it cost them at least $300,000.

Bulk or 76% of the respondents admitted that having multiple point solutions slowed down their team’s ability to detect, respond, and recover from incidents, with 66% of organizations saying they deployed at least 10 point solutions in their security stacks.

Cisco said 85% of the respondents said their employees connect to company platforms from unmanaged devices, with 38% of them spending a fifth of their time logged onto company networks from unmanaged devices.

Moving forward, the survey found that 68% of companies plan to boost their information technology (IT) infrastructure in the next two years, up from 54% last year.

“We cannot underestimate the threat posed by our own overconfidence,” Cisco executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration Jeetu Patel said.

“Today’s organizations need to prioritize investments in integrated platforms and lean into AI (artificial intelligence) in order to operate at machine scale and finally tip the scales in the favor of defenders,” he added.  — VBL, GMA Integrated News