Australian orgs failing to prevent 42% of attacks

Australian organisations have been unable to prevent an average of 42% of cyber attacks on their businesses over the past two years, according to a new study from Tenable.

A survey commissioned by the company from Forrester Consulting found that 75% of Australian respondents believe their organisations would better be able to defend against cyber attacks if they had more resources dedicated to preventative cybersecurity.

But the majority (56%) of local respondents indicated that their cybersecurity teams are spending the majority of their time addressing critical incidents, rather than taking a proactive approach to stopping attacks in their tracks.

Validating the federal government’s concern that companies are relying too heavily on third-party technology providers, the study found that even though 65% of organisations use a third-party program for software and services, a little under half (46%) have high and very high visibility into third-party environments.

Tenable Country Manager for ANZ Scott McKinnel said the findings demonstrate that organisational and operational issues can prevent significant challenges for Australian businesses and security teams.

“Siloed cybersecurity tools, and by extension, the teams behind them, are inadvertently preventing organisations from having a clear, continuous and comprehensive view of their cyber risk,” he said. “Internal mindsets further complicate matters, and make collaboration between IT and security teams challenging. The findings show that 48% believe coordination between these teams is difficult, while 62% highlight IT is more concerned with system uptime over patching and remediation.”

McKinnel said the study found that high-maturity organisations are more likely to be taking a proactive response, and to see the value in data aggregation. These organisations also spend far less time per month producing reports for business leaders, giving them more time to proactively address threats, he said.

Image credit: iStock.com/Andrey Popov