Malaysia lags in cybersecurity: Only two per cent of orgs prepared for modern threats

KUALA LUMPUR - Only two per cent of organisations in Malaysia have the ‘mature’ level of readiness needed to be resilient against modern cybersecurity risks, a decline from 16 per cent in 2023, according to Cisco’s 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index.

The index which is based on a double-blind survey of more than 8,000 private sector security and business leaders across 30 global markets, assesses the readiness of companies on five key pillars namely identity intelligence; network resilience; machine trustworthiness; cloud reinforcement; and artificial intelligence (AI) fortification.

The findings revealed that more than half or 66 per cent of organisations fall under the ‘beginner’ or ‘formative’ stages of readiness while globally, only three per cent of companies are at a ‘mature’ stage.

Under the ‘future cyber incidents expected’, the findings saw 77 per cent of respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months.

"The cost of being unprepared can be substantial, as 73 per cent of respondents said they experienced a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months, and 44 per cent of those affected said it cost them at least US$300,000,” it said

Under ‘point solution overload’, the findings saw the traditional approach of adopting multiple cybersecurity point solutions has not delivered effective results as 87 per cent of respondents admitted that having multiple point solutions slowed down their team’s ability to detect, respond and recover from incidents.

"This raises significant concerns as 68 per cent of organisations said they have deployed ten or more point solutions in their security stacks, while 24 per cent said they have 30 or more,” it said.

"We cannot underestimate the threat posed by our own overconfidence. Today’s organisations need to prioritise investments in integrated platforms and lean into AI in order to operate at machine scale and finally tip the scales in the favour of defenders,” said Cisco executive vice-president and general manager of security and collaboration Jeetu Patel.

Meanwhile, Cisco Malaysia managing director Hana Raja said the threat landscape today is more complicated than ever and organisations globally including those in Malaysia continue to lag in their cyber resilience.

"Companies need to adopt a platform approach that will provide a simple, secure, single pane of glass view into their entire architecture to strengthen their security posture and best take advantage of the opportunities that come with emerging technologies,” she said.

According to Cisco, to overcome the challenges of today’s threat landscape, companies must accelerate meaningful investments in security, including adoption of innovative security measures and a security platform approach to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap.

To view the full report, visit https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/dam/r/newsroom/en/us/interactive/cybersecurity-readiness-index/documents/Cisco_Cybersecurity_Readiness_Index_FINAL.pdf - BERNAMA