Results indicate cyber-related information sharing is increasing, signaling a positive response to national- and industry-level calls to action
IronNet Cybersecurity, in its mission to transform cybersecurity through Collective Defense, released its 2021 Cybersecurity Impact Report assessing timely topics such as the estimated cost per enterprise of the SolarWinds cyber attack, executive-level engagement in attack responses, and the effect of information sharing on an organization’s overall security posture.
IronNet commissioned independent research firm Sapio to survey 473 IT security decision makers in the technology, public services, financial, and utilities sectors across the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore.
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The report revealed a complex relationship between the reported level of confidence organizations have in their cybersecurity posture and their ongoing attack volume and impact: that is, despite rising confidence, incidents are increasing, too. While 92 percent of respondents express confidence in their current security technology stack, adversaries are still evading traditional defensive technologies. Nearly half of respondents cited a rise in cyber incidents in the past 12 months, in part due to the increasing sophistication of attacks; and the SolarWinds attack cost, on average, 11 percent of affected respondents’ annual revenue.
What is helping, however, is information sharing: Responses revealed positive effects of cyber-related information sharing on an organization’s overall cybersecurity posture.
- 90 percent of respondents indicated that the security posture of their company has improved over the past two years.
- 72 percent of companies who have increased information sharing with industry peers report their overall security posture has improved over the past two years.
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Despite the reported benefits of information sharing for improving cybersecurity, respondents indicated that there are still obstacles that limit collaboration among industry peers: concerns about data privacy and liability (53 percent), the lack of an automated or standard mechanism to share information with peers (34 percent), and the fact that shared information is not timely or relevant by the time companies receive it (33 percent).
General (Ret.) Keith Alexander, Founder and Co-CEO of IronNet, said, “Organizations are clearly struggling to keep up with the volume and impact of cyber attacks coming from well-funded and well-organized nation states. We believe that the main reason for this is that every organization is still trying to battle these attacks individually, when they should be working together to create an exponentially stronger defense. Sharing and operationalizing attack intelligence through a Collective Defense model provides that automated, real-time solution that is missing in the market, and can be done securely, using anonymized data. This is the only way to ultimately shift the balance of power away from the attackers. Fortunately, our survey data shows that organizations are starting to increase their information sharing and are seeing benefits from doing so. This is a positive signal towards the adoption of Collective Defense.”
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