Splunk Details Increase in Data Breaches, Downtime Due to Cybersecurity Issues -

More than half of organizations worldwide have been victimized by a data breach and some six in 10 have been hit with unplanned downtime on a monthly basis, big data platform developer Splunk said in a new report.

More than 1,500 security leaders participated in the worldwide survey to compile Splunk’s State of Security 2023 report, revealing they’ve continued to see an increase in cyberattacks and unplanned outages. According to the report, 52% of organizations say they have suffered a data breach in the past two years, an increase from 49% in 2022 earlier and 39% in 2021.

In addition, 62% of respondents report that their business-critical applications have suffered from unplanned downtime due to a cybersecurity incident on at least a monthly basis, an increase from 54% in 2022.

Commenting on the findings, Ryan Kovar, Splunk security strategist, said:

“In the organizations we’ve worked with, resilience has been strongest with a collaborative approach in everything, from software development and infrastructure monitoring to business continuity planning. This approach brings everyone to the table, including security leaders with IT and business leaders, so they all can focus on protecting the organization.”

Splunk Report Examined

Key findings from the report include:

On average, respondents report more than two months (2.24) go by from when a bad actor gains access to when appropriate parties are aware of it.

The mean number of outages an organization faces is ~22 per year. The costs of this downtime consume roughly 2.7% of annual revenue.

According to Splunk’s recent Resilience Pays Off global research report, downtime can cost organizations roughly $365,000 per hour.

Nearly four in 10 of the respondents (39%) say cybersecurity incidents have directly harmed their competitive position.

31% say cybersecurity incidents have reduced shareholder value.

How Organizations Address Security

While enterprises face major cybersecurity obstacles, many organizations are taking steps to address cybersecurity obstacles:

95% of the respondents say their security budgets will increase over the next two years, with 56% saying their budgets are increasing significantly.

81% of organizations say they are converging aspects of their security and IT operations.

Respondents said convergence will help with the overall visibility of risks in their environment (58%) and will result in improved cooperation in threat identification and response (55%).

95% of respondents said they have increased their focus on third-party risk assessments.

91% of respondents agree that better capture and analysis of detection data is one of the most effective tools to prevent successful ransomware attacks.