Security leaders, while supporting business growth and digital transformation, struggle with a multitude of challenges. We know this because you tell us, both in ongoing conversations and as part of our annual benchmark survey. Some challenges are focused on security, such as needing better visibility or automation, or striving for greater simplicity of management and response. Some are related to the success of your business, such as wanting to support growth and transformation no matter which cloud application is needed, or which mobile device is being used. Other challenges relate to making investments now that will remain relevant into the future as your organization changes. And all of that is in addition to the everyday demands of the day job, such as detecting and blocking advanced threats. It’s difficult to manage sophisticated threat actors and the ever-expanding attack surface at the same time. Your challenges go beyond just having to do more with a limited budget, and extend into maintaining brand reputation, board and stockholder confidence, and recruiting expertise to match cyberattack tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), to name a few.
You have to provide users the access they need while meeting these security, complexity, and budget challenges. You also need to lower technology overhead, avoid major breaches, hunt down threats before they infiltrate your network and exfiltrate your data, spend security budget smarter, and win over more customers.
According to the World Economic Forum, cyberattacks are perceived as the #2 global risk of concern to business leaders in advanced economies, second only to fiscal crises.
By conducting our sixth annual survey of 2,800 IT decision makers from 13 countries, we’ve continued our annual tradition of going deep into your world to compile key benchmark statistics. We also spoke at length to a panel of CISOs to analyze the findings and build a list of 20 considerations for 2020. This report provides valuable takeaways and data you can share with other members of your C-suite, or your board of directors, to make concrete recommendations for improving your organization’s security posture.
Because we know there’s nothing certain except uncertainty in this industry, we styled this report's sections as questions you might be asking yourself as you prepare for the year ahead. If these questions resonate with you, or provoke additional areas of inquiry, we’d love to hear from you at security-reports@cisco.external.com. Meanwhile, we hope the report will help you navigate this year’s security challenges.
To see all of the reports in our Cybersecurity Report Series, go to: cisco.com/go/securityreports.