Commvault, global provider of cyber resilience and data protection solutions for the hybrid cloud, has unveiled the 2024 Cyber Recovery Readiness Report in collaboration with research firm GigaOm. This global survey, which included 1,000 security and IT professionals from 11 countries, reveals critical insights into business resilience against cyberattacks.
Notably, the report commissioned by Commvault highlights that cyber mature organizations recover 41% faster from cyberattacks, experience fewer breaches, and 54% express complete confidence in their ability to recover from a breach, compared to only 33% of less prepared companies. Furthermore, 70% of cyber mature organizations test their recovery plans quarterly, a significant increase from the 43% of organizations with minimal preparedness.
The study identifies five key capabilities, termed resiliency markers, that may significantly enhance a company’s ability to recover swiftly from cyberattacks and reduce the incidence of breaches. These markers emerged from an extensive analysis of survey responses covering topics such as breach frequency, deployment of resilience technologies, and the speed of data recovery and resumption of normal operations. The five resiliency markers are security tools that provide early risk warnings, including insider threats; implementation of a known-clean dark site or secondary system; an isolated environment for storing an immutable copy of data; well-defined runbooks, roles, and processes for incident response; and specific measures to demonstrate cyber recovery readiness and risk.
“One of the research’s main conclusions is that companies cannot take short cuts if they want to genuinely improve their cyber security,” said Chris Ray, a cybersecurity analyst at GigaOm. “We observed notable differences in resilience between organizations that deployed one or two of the resiliency markers versus four or five.” It’s imperative that businesses approach resilience in layers. Nowadays, fewer than 85% of those questioned really do that. If businesses wish to be robust and have the upper hand against dishonest people, this has to change quickly.”
Frequent and Modern Testing Practices
“Companies that just focus on testing for disaster recovery are missing the boat,” said Tim Zonca, VP, Portfolio Marketing, Commvault.The report’s findings would underscore the critical importance of these markers. Notably, only 13% of respondents were classified as cyber mature, meaning they had adopted at least four of the five resiliency markers. The survey revealed several compelling insights. Cyber mature organizations recover 41% faster from cyberattacks than those with zero or one resiliency marker. These organizations experience fewer breaches compared to those with fewer than four markers. Additionally, 54% of cyber mature organizations expressed complete confidence in their ability to recover from a breach, in contrast to only 33% of less prepared companies. Furthermore, 70% of cyber mature organizations test their recovery plans quarterly, compared to just 43% of organizations with minimal maturity markers.
The 2024 Cyber Recovery Readiness Report highlights the significant advantages of adopting comprehensive resilience strategies. By implementing the identified resiliency markers, businesses can not only enhance their recovery speed and reduce breach frequency but also bolster their overall confidence in managing and mitigating cyber threats. As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated, the insights from this report provide a crucial roadmap for organizations striving to fortify their defenses and ensure operational continuity
“As we drill down into these cyber capabilities, key practices are emerging as fundamentally critical to any cyber preparedness strategy, and testing for cyber recovery readiness is one of them,” said Tim Zonca, VP, Portfolio Marketing, Commvault. “Companies that just focus on testing for disaster recovery are missing the boat. Given the evolving nature of cyber threats, frequent and modern testing practices for cyber recovery are essential so environments are not re-infected and recovery processes are robust.”
This survey on cyber readiness, which Commvault and GigaOm performed in April 2024 with 1,000 respondents in 11 countries, aimed to learn more about respondents’ perspectives on the state of their organizations’ readiness against cyber attacks. Those who responded worked for businesses with annual sales of at least $10 million, most of which were at least $500 million. A third of the respondents were in senior or mid-level management (48%), 35% were board-level or C-Suite executives, and 17% were other managers. Survey participants include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.
