In 2024, businesses reported taking an average of 7.3 months to recover from cybersecurity breaches – 25% longer than expected and over a month past the anticipated timeline of 5.9 months, according to Fastly.
Cybersecurity leaders feel unprepared for future threats
Recovery times were even worse for companies that planned on cutting back cybersecurity spending. They faced an average of 68 incidents each – 70% above the average – and their recovery times stretched to 10.9 months, more than five months longer than those maintaining or increasing their budgets.
With attacks becoming more prevalent and taking longer to recover from, not surprisingly, the report found that 87% of businesses do plan to increase investment in security tools over the next 12 months, an 11% year-on-year rise. However, despite the additional spending, 50% surveyed cybersecurity decision makers feel that an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape has still left them unprepared to deal with future attacks.
“Full recovery from breaches is not getting any faster. The revenue, reputation and time lost damages business relationships permanently and drains resources from other areas of the business. 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,” said Marshall Erwin, CISO at Fastly.
Businesses worry about security stack reliability
Recent global IT outages have also been a wake up call for security professionals with many now scrutinizing their vendor choices and the value of cybersecurity investments more closely.
In 2024, 40% of businesses expressed concerns about the reliability and software quality across their security stack and 29% considered changing vendors (a figure that rises to 37% in the US). In addition, 86% of businesses have changed their approach to testing and rolling out updates in response to major reliability incidents.
When it comes to software security, we found that organizations are also re-evaluating how security integrates across their operations. Increasingly, key stakeholders outside traditional security teams, including Platform Engineering teams, are having a say in which app security solutions are being adopted, with one in five (20%) saying their organization’s priority was to adopt a platform engineering approach to software security.
This is also reflected in a change in culpability, with Platform engineering teams held responsible for 8% of cybersecurity incidents, only slightly down from CISOs at 14% and CIOs at 12%.
“Cybersecurity spending is under the microscope as businesses continue to feel unprepared dealing with an evolving threat landscape. We are seeing a shift towards a shared responsibility for security across organizations, with increased focus on embedding security measures throughout all projects. Companies that bake in security and establish strong partnerships with security organizations early in a product development process are in a better position to deal with emerging threats and recover more quickly from attacks,” added Erwin.
