Barracuda: Why Businesses Struggle to Manage Cyber Risk

Many organisations are struggling to effectively manage cyber risk and improve their cyber resilience, according to a new report from Barracuda.

The report, titled Leading Your Business Through Cyber Risk, found that just 43% of organisations surveyed have confidence in their ability to address cyber threats, vulnerabilities and attacks.

The governance challenges undermining cyber efforts

The findings, based on data from Barracuda's international Cybernomics 101 study, highlight some of the key governance challenges undermining cyber resilience efforts:

Security Policy Struggles

Among other things, the findings show that many organisations find it hard to implement company-wide security policies such as authentication measures and access controls. Around half of smaller and mid-sized companies say it's difficult to implement consistent, company-wide security policies like authentication measures and access controls across the organisation.

Management Buy-In Issues

Just over a third (35%) of smaller companies worry that senior leadership doesn't view cyberattacks as a significant risk to be prioritised, while the larger companies are most likely to struggle with a lack of budget (38%) and skilled professionals (35%).

Supply Chain Concerns

Many organisations said they have concerns about a lack of security and control over the supply chain and visibility into third parties with access to sensitive or confidential data. Around one in 10 don’t have an incident response plan to turn to in the event of a successful breach.

“For many businesses today, a security incident of some kind is almost inevitable,” says Siroui Mushegian, CIO of Barracuda Networks. "What matters is how you prepare for, withstand, respond to, and recover from the incident. This is cyber resilience. Advanced, defence-in-depth security solutions will take you most of the way there, but success also depends on security governance — the policies and programs, leadership, and more that enable you to manage risk. When NIST updated its benchmark cybersecurity framework earlier this year, it added security governance as a strategic priority.”

Barracuda’s new report offers guidance to help organisations improve their cyber resilience posture, including a checklist template based on the updated NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. The template provides a structured way to assess cyber resilience capabilities and identify areas for improvement.

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