Only one percent of the companies in the Philippines have a “matured” level of readiness to be resilient against cybersecurity risks, according to the latest study from Cisco.
In Cisco’s 2024 Cybersecurity readiness index in the Philippines, 1 percent of organizations are at the mature stage of readiness, 35 percent are at the progressive stage, 61 percent are formative and 3 percent are beginners.
The Philippines’ readiness is lower than the global cybersecurity readiness index with only 3 percent of respondent organizations qualify for the mature category.
The index assesses the readiness of companies on five key pillars: identity intelligence, network resilience, machine trustworthiness, cloud reinforcement and AI fortification, comprising 31 corresponding solutions and capabilities.
It is based on a double-blind survey of over 8,000 private sector security and business leaders across 30 global markets conducted by an independent third party. The respondents were asked to indicate which of these solutions and capabilities they had deployed and the stage of deployment.
Companies were then classified into four stages of increasing readiness: beginner, formative, progressive and mature.
“We cannot underestimate the threat posed by our own overconfidence,” said Jeetu Patel, general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco. “Today’s organizations need to prioritize investments in integrated platforms and lean into AI in order to operate at machine scale and finally tip the scales in the favor of defenders.”
Despite the lack of readiness, 78 percent of companies still feel moderately to very confident in their ability to defend against a cyberattack with their current infrastructure – this disparity between confidence and readiness suggests that companies may have misplaced confidence in their ability to navigate the threat landscape and may not be properly assessing the true scale of the challenges they face.
Meanwhile, a Cisco study further showed that 67 percent 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 59 percent of respondents said they experienced a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months, and 36 percent of those affected said it cost them at least $300,000.
To overcome the challenges of today’s threat landscape, companies must accelerate meaningful investments in security, including the adoption of innovative security measures and a security platform approach, strengthen their network resilience, establish meaningful use of generative AI, and ramp up recruitment to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap.
“The threat landscape today is more complicated than ever and organizations globally including those in the Philippines 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,” said Zaza Soriano-Nicart, Cisco Philippines managing director.
