Dubai, UAE, April 15, 2019:  Cisco recently published its annual CISO Benchmark Study. Now in its fifth year, the comprehensive global survey provides an annual health check on the state of the CISO for more than 3000 security leaders across 18 countries.

 

This year’s results show security professionals are placing higher priority on vendor consolidation, collaboration between networking and security teams, and security awareness exercises to strengthen an organizations security posture and reduce the risk of breaches. To further address complexity challenges, many CISOs are increasingly confident that migrating to the cloud will improve protection efforts. 

 

Complex security environments made up of solutions from 10 or more security vendors could be hampering security professional’s visibility across their environments. Sixty-five percent of respondents do not find it easy to determine the scope of a compromise, contain it and remediate from exploits. The unknown threats that exist outside the enterprise in the form of users, data, devices, and apps is also a top concern for CISOs. To help address these challenges, and better protect their organizations, of those surveyed:  

Survey respondents also noted the continued high financial impact of breaches. Forty-five percent of respondents reported the financial impact of a breach to their organization was more than $500,000. The good news is that more than 50 percent of respondents are driving breach costs below half a million. But there remains a stubborn eight percent claiming an eye-watering cost of more than $5 million per incident for their most significant breach of the past year. 

 

“This year, more than ever before CISOs are reporting that they are taking a much more proactive role in reducing their exposure through consolidation and training, as well as investments in critical technologies, for cyber defense and breach containment, but the war is far from over,” said Fady Younes, Cybersecurity Director, Middle East & Africa. “Security leaders are still struggling to get greater visibility across their organization and into threats. You can’t protect what you can’t see. Cisco is committed to helping organizations address these challenges and implement new techniques and technology to stay one step ahead of malicious actors and threats.” 

 

The following findings highlight some of the positive developments security professionals have made to improve their security posture: 

But the fight is far from over--the following findings show CISO challenges and opportunities for improvement: