A new study from cloud computing services provider Fastly Inc has revealed that organisations in Australia and New Zealand are facing longer recovery times from cybersecurity incidents than initially anticipated.
The findings are part of a global survey conducted by Sapio Research in September. The study involved 1,800 IT decision-makers, including 200 participants from Australia and New Zealand, representing large organisations across various industries.
The 2024 Global Security Research Report showed that businesses in the region take an average of seven months to recover from breaches, exceeding their projected timelines by 19% and surpassing the estimated 5.9-month recovery period.
The delays were more pronounced for businesses that reduced their cybersecurity budgets. These organisations reported an average of 31 incidents and experienced recovery times that extended over five months longer than companies that either maintained or increased their security spending.
To counter rising cyber risks, 88% of respondents indicated plans to increase investments in cybersecurity tools over the next year, marking a 12% rise compared to 2023.
Despite this planned spending, 51% of cybersecurity decision-makers expressed concerns about their preparedness to address future attacks, citing the increasing complexity of cyber threats.
Marshall Erwin (pictured), Fastly’s chief information security officer, said that breaches damage business relationships and drain resources from other areas of the business due to their impact on revenue and reputation.
“With attacks not diminishing and the possibility of further high-profile slip-ups always present, it’s crucial that any changes businesses are now making to cybersecurity strategies fit within a holistic plan and aren’t knee-jerk reactions,” he said.
Recent high-profile IT outages have prompted businesses to scrutinise vendor reliability and the quality of their software solutions.
The report found that 49% of respondents were concerned about the dependability of their cybersecurity infrastructure, and 26% were considering changing vendors.
Moreover, 86% of organisations stated they had altered how they test and deploy updates in light of recent disruptions.
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The survey also noted a shift toward integrating cybersecurity measures across operational teams. A growing number of companies (22%) are adopting platform engineering approaches to software security, which incorporate input from teams outside traditional IT security departments.
Responsibility for cybersecurity failures is becoming more distributed, with platform engineering teams accounting for 7% of incidents, compared to 12% for chief information security officers, and 8% for chief information officers.
