Only 4 per cent of companies in India have a mature level of readiness needed to manage cybersecurity risks and 3 per cent are so prepared worldwide, a recent report said.

According to Cisco’s 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index, as many as 37 per cent of companies in India are at the “progressive” stage. The other 52 per cent are at “formative” while the 7 per cent are “beginners”.

As many as 88 per cent of the respondents admitted that having multiple cybersecurity point solutions – a traditional approach – slowed down their ability to detect, respond and recover from incidents.

This is worrying as 78 per cent of organisations said they have deployed 10 or more point solutions in their security stacks, while 38 per cent said they have 30 or more.

According to the report, the problem is compounded in distributed working environments where data can be spread across services, devices, applications, and users.

This lack of readiness is substantial despite almost three-quarters of companies believing a cybersecurity incident will disrupt their business in the next 12-24 months.

Despite this lack of readiness, 31 per cent of companies feel “very confident” in their ability to stay resilient amidst this evolving cybersecurity landscape.

The gap in cybersecurity talent persists with 91 per cent of companies highlighting it as an issue. As many as 59 per cent of companies said they had more than 10 roles related to cybersecurity unfilled in their organisation at the time of the survey.

Companies are ramping up their defences, with 71 per cent planning to significantly upgrade their information technology infrastructure in the next 12 to 24 months.

This is a marked increase from 51 per cent who planned to do so last year. Most prominently, organisations plan to upgrade existing solutions (70 per cent), deploy new solutions (58 per cent), and invest in AI-driven technologies (60 per cent).

Notably, 99 per cent of companies expect to increase their cybersecurity budget in the next 12 months, and 95 per cent said their budgets will increase by 10 per cent or more.