Cyber leaders’ confidence in their organization’s defenses plummets, but costs mount

While the number of cyber threats and associated costs are increasing, cybersecurity leaders appear to be struggling with the effectiveness of their organization’s defenses, according to the EY 2023 Global Cybersecurity Leadership Insights Study.

The survey of 500 cybersecurity leaders worldwide finds that just one in five considers their organization’s approach to be effective for current and future threats. Half of respondents also appear skeptical about the effectiveness of the training that their organizations provide and just 36% are satisfied with the levels of adoption of best practices by teams outside the IT department.

At the same time, cyber leader respondents report mounting costs associated with cybersecurity investment and an average of 44 cyber incidents in 2022. Chief information security officer (CISO) respondents report an average annual spend of US$35m on cybersecurity and that the median cost of a breach to their organization has increased by 12% to US$2.5m in 2023 and is anticipated to reach US$4m.

Despite high levels of spending, detection and response times appear slow. More than three-quarters of respondents (76%) say their organizations take an average of six months or longer to detect and respond to an incident.

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“With such an increase in type, complexity, and number of attacks we see CISOs still feeling unprepared against those cyber threats. It is not only about how big is the investment in protecting organizations but more about how well the value is extracted from specific intelligent solutions. Efficient cybersecurity is what should be our aim – better integration and use of cybersecurity technologies altogether with a culture of being exceptional at the basics of cybersecurity is what can make a difference in protecting organizations,” says Cătălina Dodu, Consulting Service Line Leader in Romania and Cybersecurity Leader EY South Cluster. 

Simplify to survive

The study finds that those organizations that are more satisfied with their approach to cybersecurity, experience fewer cyber incidents, and can detect and respond to incidents quicker have certain common characteristics.

While 70% of these “Secure Creators” identified in the study, define themselves as early adopters of emerging technology, they focus on extracting the most value from specific advanced solutions, such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) (62%) and Security, Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) (52%) that allow them to have a clear line of sight of cybersecurity incidents. In addition, they have specific strategies in place for managing attacks through multiple sources: their own cloud, their partners, and their supply chains. Respondents from these types of organizations appear almost twice as likely to be highly concerned about cyber risks from their supply chain (38%) and related risks, such as intellectual property protection (38%).

Finally, “Secure Creators” embed cybersecurity thinking and training from the C-suite down to the workforce. As a result, CISOs from these organizations say that their approach is more likely to positively impact their pace of transformation and innovation (56%), as well as their ability to rapidly respond to market opportunities (58%) and to focus on creating value (63%).