IBM: Security Response Planning On The Rise

Asia Blockchain Review
August 4, 2020
  • Global Survey Finds Use of More Than 50 Security Tools Leads to Less-Effective Security Response
  • Majority of Organizations Don’t Have Specific Plans for Common and Emerging Attacks   

IBM Security announced the results of a global report examining businesses’ effectiveness in preparing for and responding to cyber-attacks.

While organizations surveyed have slowly improved in their ability to plan for, detect and respond to cyberattacks over the past five years, their ability to contain an attack has declined by 13% during this same period.

The global survey conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by IBM Security found that respondents’ security response efforts were hindered by the use of too many security tools, as well as a lack of specific playbooks for common attack types.

While security response planning is slowly improving, the vast majority of organizations surveyed (74%) are still reporting that their plans are either ad-hoc, applied inconsistently, or that they have no plans at all.

The key findings of those surveyed from the fifth annual Cyber Resilient Organization Report include:

  • Slowly Improving:  More surveyed organizations have adopted formal, enterprise-wide security response plans over the past 5 years of the study; growing from 18% of respondents in 2015, to 26% in this year’s report (a 44% improvement).
  • Playbooks Needed: Even amongst those with a formal security response plan, only one third (representing 17% of total respondents) had also developed specific playbooks for common attack types — and plans for emerging attack methods like ransomware lagged even further behind.
  • Complexity Hinders Response: The amount of security tools that an organization was using had a negative impact across multiple categories of the threat lifecycle amongst those surveyed. Organizations using 50+ security tools ranked themselves 8% lower in their ability to detect, and 7% lower in their ability to respond to an attack, than those respondents with less tools.
  • Better Planning, Less Disruption: Companies with formal security response plans applied across the business were less likely to experience significant disruption as the result of a cyberattack. Over the past two years, only 39% of these companies experienced a disruptive security incident, compared to 62% of those with less formal or consistent plans.

Updating Playbooks for Emerging Threats

The survey found that even amongst organizations with a formal cybersecurity incident response plan (CSIRP), only 33% had playbooks in place for specific types of attacks. Since different breeds of attack require unique response techniques, having pre-defined playbooks provides organizations with consistent and repeatable action plans for the most common attacks they are likely to face.

More Tools Led to Worse Response Capabilities

The report also found that complexity is negatively impacting incident response capabilities. Those surveyed estimated their organization was using more than 45 different security tools on average, and that each incident they responded to required coordination across around 19 tools on average.

The use of open, interoperable platforms as well as automation technologies can help reduce the complexity of responding across disconnected tools. Amongst high-performing organizations in the report, 63% said the use of interoperable tools helped them improve their response to cyber attacks.

Better Planning Pays Off

This year’s report suggests that surveyed organizations who invested in formal planning were more successful in responding to incidents. Overall, the data suggests that surveyed organizations that were more mature in their response preparedness relied more heavily on technology innovations to become more resilient.

For more information, please check www.ibm.com/security, follow @IBMSecurity on Twitter or visit the IBM Security Intelligence blog.

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