For modern businesses, cyberattacks are essentially an everyday instance, with an ever-increasing number of organizations say they are facing such crises almost on a daily basis.
This is according to a new report from Dell surveying 1,000 IT decision-makers from around the world, working in a wide range of public and private sector industries, with the respondents saying their firms experienced higher levels of natural and modern disasters than in previous years, resulting in more data loss, more downtime, and higher recovery costs.
Of all those disasters, cyberattacks were the biggest ones, as they took up almost half (48%) of all recorded incidents. Furthermore, they were up from 37% a mere year ago.
Fewer security vendors, more protection
Elsewhere, the 2022 Dell Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) report noted almost nine in ten firms (86%) experienced at least one cybersecurity-related disruption in the last 12 months.
Firms that suffered data loss have had more than a million dollars ($1.06 million) in downtime costs, up from $959,000 just a year ago. Firms that were prevented access to their data (as opposed to losing access completely) have lost roughly $660,000, on average.
Previously, to combat the threat, organizations would hire multiple data protection vendors. Now, Dell claims in the report, the tides are turning as businesses realize they’re more secure with fewer partners. In fact, 85% of organizations that use multiple data protection vendors now “see a benefit” in reducing this number. Firms with a single vendor have had 34% fewer costs recovering from a cybersecurity incident.
Besides culling unnecessary partners, businesses are also increasingly turning towards Zero Trust architecture to stay secure. The report found 91% of organizations are either aware of, or are planning to deploy, a Zero Trust architecture. Still, just a quarter (23%) are deploying a Zero Trust model, while 12% are already fully deployed.
Zero Trust is a cybersecurity model that changes how firms handle security. Instead of relying exclusively on perimeter defenses, Zero Trust invokes a more proactive strategy that only allows known and authorized traffic through a system of boundaries and data pipelines.
