You’ve likely heard this line before. The concept is simple, but the outcome is puzzling and problematic. Organizations have started to understand the cybersecurity challenge and investments in technology and solutions to combat attackers are continuing to grow. However, many are still experiencing major service disruptions and data breaches on a continuous basis.
In fact, while Gartner analysts predict that internal cybersecurity budgets will grow by 11.3% in 2023—reaching more than US$188.3 billion—studies from IBM show some alarming statistics:
- The global average cost of a data breach is close to US$4.35 million, 2.6% higher than 2021 and 12.7% higher than 2020.
- The average cost of data breach in Middle East was US$7.46 million.
- 83% of the organizations studied have had more than one data breach.
Strengthening your defenses and fortifying your systems is the first step to keeping your business resilient. Defense teams need to be aware of and prepared for infiltrations 100% of the time while attackers only need to realize one vulnerability to cause a potential cyber incident. Some attempts will progress past your first lines of defense, but a strong cybersecurity program can detect and mitigate incidents to your organization quickly before significant damage is done.
Barriers to a strong cyber defense
So why is the volume of security breaches increasing despite the additional investment in cybersecurity?
There’s no single answer to the question. Although the multi-billion-dollar, year-over-year investment increase has positively impacted the security posture of many organizations, cyber attackers are regularly updating their tactics to avoid detection. Our team has explored this phenomenon more closely with industry peers, partners, and clients and identified four key issues.
Strategies to elevate your cybersecurity posture
There is no single ‘silver bullet’ solution when it comes to cybersecurity. A holistic, pragmatic approach is required.
Organizations need a better understanding of their threat or cyber risk profile, as well as their capabilities across people, processes, and technology, to uncover gaps and opportunities for efficiencies.
While this can be easier said than done, there are several initiatives your business can undertake to help level the playing field.
How can a best-fit solution better suit your organization?
Finding a unified, consolidated solution that combines independent systems into a single offering with a modular cyber control capability will reduce overhead. While best-of-breed solutions hold inherent value, they may not have the capabilities to positively coincide with other cyber controls.
BDO’s security solutions offer multiple cyber capabilities in a single offering. This reduces the unnecessary management of multiple point solutions, training staff and resources, reducing cost, and investing budget towards incomplete cybersecurity strategies.
Why investments in cybersecurity matter
The cost of data breaches is rising faster than the investments being made by organizations to improve their security posture. Based on this trajectory, if organizations continue with their current strategy of making investments and decisions based on the latest trending technology point solution or regulatory compliance requirements, they will always be one step behind.
Attackers are more sophisticated and adversarial nation states as well as organized crime syndicates are seeing the value in building out hacker groups. Added to this, the continued cyber talent shortage shows that it will be some time before we’re able to get ahead of security breaches. Until then, it is imperative for organizations to have a strong foundation of pragmatic cyber capabilities and strategy that allow them to mitigate threats and reduce risk while allowing their business to remain competitive.
How BDO can help
BDO has extensive knowledge and experience in building, implementing, and executing custom security capabilities in all verticals. Our holistic and tailored approach to solving your unique and specific security challenges can help your organization build a robust security posture without sacrificing efficiency or competitive advantage.
Original content provided by BDO Canada.
Subscribe to receive the latest BDO News and Insights
Please fill out the following form to access the download.