Global Accenture cybersecurity study identifies Ireland as having highest proportion of cybersecurity leaders

Ireland is a cybersecurity powerhouse with almost three in 10 businesses in the country identified as “Leaders” in preventing and defending against cyberattacks, according to a new global Accenture study. Based on a survey of more than 4,600 enterprise security experts around the globe, Ireland emerged as the country with the highest proportion of cybersecurity leaders globally. The news comes at a point where there is greater pressure on leaders to make rapid, highly-informed decisions, and take immediate actions to protect and support their people, ensuring that critical business operations continue in order to help societal continuity.

Accenture’s third annual “State of Cyber Resilience Study” explores the extent to which organisations prioritise security, the effectiveness of current security efforts, and the impact of new security-related investments.

“Our analysis identifies a group of stand-out organisations in Ireland that appear to have cracked the code of cybersecurity when it comes to best practices,” said Jacky Fox, Managing Director of Accenture Security in Ireland. “Leaders in our survey are far quicker at detecting a breach, mobilising their response, minimising the damage and getting operations back to normal.”

From detailed modelling of cybersecurity performance, the study identified a group of elite “leaders” – 28% in Ireland, 17% globally – that achieve significantly better results from their cybersecurity technology investments than other organisations. Leaders were characterised as among the highest performers in at least three of the following categories: stop more attacks, find breaches faster, fix breaches faster and reduce breach impact. The study identified a second group, comprising 59% of Irish respondents (74% globally), as “non-leaders” – average performers in terms of cyber resilience but far from being idle.

Compared with non-leaders in the survey, those identified as leaders are nearly four times more effective in stopping targeted cyberattacks. They have a threefold advantage when it comes to the speed at which they can fix a security breach. For instance, leaders were four times more likely than non-leaders to detect a breach in less than one day (88% vs. 22%). And when defences fail, 55% of leaders in Ireland fixed breaches in 15 days or less, on average, while 34% of breaches in Ireland had no impact at all.

“When a cyberattack prevents a pharmaceutical company from manufacturing drugs or a ship from docking at port — those are the kinds of crippling business impacts we’re most concerned about helping our clients avoid. At a time of great global uncertainty organisations must take every step possible to minimise any negative impacts,” said Jacky. “Deferred decisions and delayed actions have immediate and longer-term business continuity impacts. If investments in technology don’t hit the mark when it comes to defending against cyberattacks, C-suite executives are not only jeopardising their operations and finances but their brands and reputations as well.”

Among the key differences in cybersecurity practices between global leaders and non-leaders, the report identified:

• Leaders focused more of their budget allocations on sustaining what they already have, whereas the non-leaders place significantly more emphasis on piloting and scaling new capabilities.
• Leaders were nearly three times less likely to have had more than 500,000 customer records exposed through cyberattacks in the last 12 months (15% vs. 44%).
• Leaders were nearly three times as likely to provide users of security tools with required training for those tools (30% vs. 12%).

The study also found that investment in innovation is growing, with the number of global leaders spending more than 20% of IT budgets on advanced technology investments doubling in the last three years. Additionally, direct attacks to security systems are down 11% over the last year while security breaches are down 27%. Indirect attacks against weak links in supply chains now account for 29% (40% globally) of security breaches in Ireland. Sixty-nine percent of all respondents to Accenture’s global survey say that the cost of staying ahead of attackers is becoming unsustainable.

To learn more about the research, download the Third Annual State of Cyber Resilience study here.