As few as 17 pc firms really ready for attacks, says Arbor

BANGALORE, INDIA: Arbor Networks, Inc., a provider of DDoS and advanced threat protection solutions for enterprise and service provider networks, shared results of a survey it sponsored with the Economist Intelligence Unit on the issue of incident response preparedness.

The report entitled "Cyber incident response: Are business leaders ready?" shows that despite 77 per cent of companies suffering an incident in the past two years, over a third of firms (38 per cent) still have no incident response plan in place should an incident occur. Only 17 per cent of businesses globally are fully prepared for an online security incident.

More prepared firms that do have a response plan in place typically rely on the IT department to lead this process, but the majority also draw upon external resources - primarily IT forensic experts, specialist legal advisers and law enforcement experts.

"There is an encouraging trend towards formalizing corporate incident response preparations. But with the source and impact of threats becoming harder to predict, executives should make sure that incident response becomes an organizational reflex rather than just a plan pulled down off the shelf," said James Chambers, a senior editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Arbor Networks President Matthew Moynahan added, "As these findings show, when it comes to cyber-attacks, we live in a "when" not "if" world. In the wake of recent high profile targeted attacks in the retail sector, a company's ability to quickly identify and classify and incident, and execute a response plan, is critical to not only protecting corporate assets and customer data, but the brand, reputation and bottom line of the company."

Key findings point that the level of preparedness is being held back by lack of understanding about threats, only 17 percent of business leaders feel fully prepared for an incident, and 41 percent of business leaders feel a better understanding of potential threats would help them be better prepared.

It also adds that having a formal plan or team in place has a significant effect on feeling of preparedness among executives. Specially as half of all companies feel that they are unable to predict the business impact when a breach occurs.

More results gleaned here show that two-thirds of executives say that responding effectively to an incident can enhance their firm's reputation. The percentage of organisations that now have an incident response team and plan in place is set to rise above 80 percent in the next few years. Firms that have suffered an incident in the past 24 months are twice as likely to have an arrangement with a third party expert as firms that have not suffered an incident.

Notably enough, 57 per cent of organisations do not voluntarily report incidents where they are not legally required to do so.Only a third of companies share information about incidents with other organisations to spread best practice and benchmark their own response.