Study finds five markers of cyber maturity

Defined roles and processes for incident response are among the five key capabilities that have helped companies recover faster from cyber attacks, according to research from Commvault.

A survey commissioned by the company from GigaOm found that five key capabilities or resiliency markers, when deployed together, helped companies both reduce incidents of security breaches and recover more quickly from a breach when one does occur.

Another resiliency marker is the ability to utilise security tools that enable early warning about risk, including insider risk. A known clean dark site or secondary system can also help in this regard, as can an isolated environment to store an immutable copy of data that needs to be protected.

The final capability is the ability to use specific measures to show cyber recovery readiness and risk.

An assessment of the survey results found that only 13% of organisations are categorised as cyber mature. These organisations have deployed at least four or five of the resiliency markers. Such organisations recovered 41% faster than respondents with none or only one of the five markers.

Cyber mature organisations also reported experiencing fewer breaches than their peers, and were more confident in their cyber readiness. More than half (54%) reported being completely confident in their ability to recover from a breach, compared to only 33% of less prepared organisations.

The survey also highlighted the importance of frequent testing of recovery plans, with 70% of cyber mature organisations doing so quarterly, compared to 43% of those with only zero or one maturity marker.

The Commvault ‘Cyber Recovery Readiness Report’ can be found here.

Image credit: iStock.com/Jinda Noipho