Commvault, in collaboration with research firm GigaOm, has released its 2024 Cyber Recovery Readiness Report. This global survey of 1,000 security and IT respondents across 11 countries directly addresses a fundamental question: “What can businesses do to be more resilient in the face of cyber attacks?”
Commvault and GigaOm were able to pinpoint five key capabilities, which they termed ‘resiliency markers’, that when deployed together, helped companies recover faster from cyber attacks and experience fewer breaches compared to companies that did not follow the same path.
These five resiliency markers emerged after data analysis teams combed through survey results across a range of topics including: how often companies were breached, what resilience technologies were (or were not) deployed, and how rapidly businesses were able to recover data and resume normal operations.
The five resiliency markers are:
- Security tools that enable early warning about risk, including insider risk.
- A known-clean dark site or secondary system in place.
- An isolated environment to store an immutable copy of the data.
- Defined runbooks, roles, and processes for incident response.
- Specific measures to show cyber recovery readiness and risk.
Only 13% of respondents were categorised as cyber mature, classed as having deployed at least four of the five resiliency markers. These companies displayed the following characteristics:
- Faster recoveries: cyber mature organizations recovered 41% faster than respondents with zero or only one marker.
- Fewer breaches: overall, cyber mature organizations report experiencing fewer breaches compared with companies that have less than four markers.
- Better confidence about cyber readiness: 54% of cyber mature organizations were completely confident in their ability to recover from a breach, compared to only 33% of less prepared organizations.
- Frequent testing makes a big difference: 70% of cyber mature organizations tested their recovery plans quarterly, compared to 43% of organizations with zero or one maturity marker, that tested with this same frequency.
Methodology
Commvault in conjunction with GigaOm conducted this inaugural study of 1,000 respondents across 11 countries in April 2024 to better understand their views on cyber readiness and how prepared their organizations are in the face of cyber threats. Respondents were from companies earning at least $10 million in annual revenues, with the majority earning $500 million or more. 35 percent of respondents were board-level or C-Suite executives, 48% were senior-level management, and the remaining 17% were mid- or junior-level management. The 11 countries included in the survey are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States.
