90 per cent of Director level respondents to a survey whose organisations across education, retail, the public sector, financial services and healthcare have experienced a cyber breach agreed most cyber attacks were avoidable.

That’s one of the insights to emerge for new research from Tanium, Cybersecurity: Prevention Is Better than the Cure, which reveals the amount of time and resources organisations spend on reactive versus preventative cybersecurity measures and the rationale behind their decisions.   

Despite the above awareness, the study shows that IT teams neglect to implement preventative cybersecurity measures for reasons such as a shortage of technical skills and budget-allocation delays from boards of directors. 

“Many organisations focus too much on cybersecurity point solutions like antivirus, rather than adopting a holistic, data-driven approach to prevention,” said Oliver Cronk, chief architect, EMEA, at Tanium. “As our research shows, many damaging security incidents – even those resulting from more sophisticated attack vectors – could have been prevented. In fact, more than half of the breaches we see could have been avoided by maintaining baseline cyber-hygiene standards. The current situation is the equivalent of leaving your front door and windows open and only locking them after a burglary has taken place.” 

Key findings include: 

Most damaging cyber attacks suffered by UK organisations are preventable. 

·       The 90 percent of Director level respondents agree that ‘the majority of cyberattacks that we have experienced within our organisation have been in some way avoidable’. 

·       86 percent of organisations compromised by a breach in the last six months believed that more investment in preventative measures (such as tools or staff training), would have minimised incidents. 

·       92 percent of organisations surveyed have experienced a breach at some point in the past, 82 percent within the last 24 months, and 73 percent in the last 12 months.   

Boards only approve new cybersecurity funding after incident has occurred. 

·       80 percent of C-suite decision makers believe the risk of cyber threats is increasing and expect 2022 to be the worst year yet in terms of the number of attacks. 

·       For IT decision makers that experienced a cyber attack in the last six months, 86 percent feel that senior leadership is likely to invest in cybersecurity only after suffering an attack; 75 percent state that “some cybersecurity incidents needed to happen” in order to get increased investment from leadership.  

·       Loss of productivity resulting from downtime is cited as the most damaging impact of a cyber attack (56 percent of all respondents). 

Preventative approaches are missed opportunities for IT teams.  

·       Almost seven in ten respondents believe that a predominantly preventative approach to cybersecurity is best (68 percent); a primarily reactive approach is favoured by only 32 percent.  

·       The skills gap and overwhelmed IT and security teams have caused preventative security measures to take a lower priority. More than half of organisations (55 percent) agree that there is insufficient staff or resources to focus on preventative security measures. 

·       Larger organisations are more likely to adopt a preventative approach, with 70 percent of organisations with 500+ employees citing prevention as preferable. Sixty percent of organisations with 250-499 employees agreed. 

·       85 percent of all respondents surveyed agreed that there is a greater cost to recover from a cybersecurity incident than to prevent one. 

A crucial element of preventative strategies is cyber hygiene, which refers to a set of habitual practices that help to secure networks and data. For example, consistent and timely patching is a fundamental element of a sound cybersecurity posture. But to be effective, organisations need to understand where vulnerabilities exist and have the ability to address them quickly and easily. The Tanium platform has these capabilities and others that help organisations strengthen cyber hygiene.  

Click here to read the full ‘Cybersecurity: Prevention Is Better than the Cure’ report, which includes more interesting findings about the attitudes of IT decision makers towards preventative cybersecurity strategies.