New Summary:
Executive leadership still considers security a high priority along with other indicators such as clarification of roles, establishing clear metrics, and cyber risk assessments.
Report shows increased challenges when managing and securing multi-vendor environments, cloud infrastructure, mobile devices, and unpatched vulnerabilities.
86 percent of security professionals say utilizing cloud security has increased visibility into their networks.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif-February 24, 2020 - RSA Conference 2020- Today, Cisco published its sixth annual CISO Benchmark Report surveying the security posture of 2,800 security professionals from 13 countries around the globe. The report provides 20 cybersecurity considerations for 2020 - gleaned from data analysis of survey results and a panel of Advisory CISOs.
Complexity Continues to be Cybersecurity's Worst Enemy
Digital transformation continues to present itself as an opportunity for IT and security leaders to innovate and gain competitive advantage. But it also carries a tsunami of infrastructure change, which often creates new challenges for security professionals with defeating unknown sophisticated threats looming as a top concern.
In today's security landscape, the average company uses more than 20 security technologies. While vendor consolidation is steadily increasing with 86 percent of organizations using between 1 and 20 vendors, more than 20 percent feel that managing a multi-vendor environment is very challenging, which has increased by 8 percent since 2017. Other notable findings:
Forty-two percent of respondents are suffering from cybersecurity fatigue, defined as virtually giving up on proactively defending against malicious actors.
Over 96 percent of fatigue sufferers saying that managing a multi-vendor environment is challenging, complexity being the main causes of burnout.
To combat complexity, security professionals are increasing investments in automation to simplify and speed up response times in their security ecosystems; using cloud security to improve visibility into their networks; and sustaining collaboration between networking, endpoint and security teams.
As organizations increasingly embrace digital transformation, CISOs are placing higher priority in adopting new security technologies to reduce exposure against malicious actors and threats. Often, many of these solutions don't integrate, creating substantial complexity in managing their security environment, said Steve Martino, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, Cisco. To address this issue, security professionals will continue steady movement towards vendor consolidation, while increasing reliance on cloud security and automation to strengthen their security posture and reduce the risk of breaches.
The following findings highlight additional CISO challenges and opportunities for improvement:
Workload protection for all user and device connections across the network was found extremely challenging-Forty-one percent of the surveyed organizations found data centers were extremely difficult to defend, and 39 percent said they struggled to secure applications. The most troublesome place to defend data was the public cloud, with 52 percent finding it very or extremely challenging to secure, and 50 percent claiming private cloud infrastructure was a top security challenge.
Security professionals struggle to secure the growing mobile workforce and ubiquitous personal devices - More than half (52 percent) of respondents stated mobile devices are now very or extremely challenging to defend. Adopting zero-trust technologies can help secure managed and unmanaged devices without slowing down employees.
Adoption of zero-trust technologies to secure access of the network, applications, users, devices and workloads needs to increase-Only 27 percent of organizations are currently using multi-factor authentication (MFA), a valuable zero-trust technology to secure the workforce. Survey respondents from the following countries showed the highest MFA adoption rates in this order: USA, China, Italy, India, Germany, and UK. While micro-segmentation, a zero-trust approach to secure access of workloads, had the least adoption at only 17 percent of respondents.
Breaches due to an unpatched vulnerability caused higher levels of data loss- A key concern for 2020 is that 46 percent of organizations, up from 30 percent in last year's report, had an incident caused by an unpatched vulnerability. Sixty-eight percent of organizations breached from an unpatched vulnerability suffered losses of 10,000 data records or more last year. In contrast, for those who said they suffered a breach from other causes, only 41percent lost 10,000 or more records in the same timeframe.
Security professionals have made positive developments to improve their security posture:
Collaboration between network and security teams remains high- Ninety-one percent of respondents reported they're very or extremely collaborative.
Security practitioners are realizing the benefits of automation for solving their skills shortage problem as they adopt solutions with greater machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities-Seventy-seven percent of our survey respondents are planning to increase automation to simplify and speed up response times in their security ecosystems.
Cloud security adoption is increasing, improving effectiveness and efficiency- Eighty-six percent of respondents say utilizing cloud security increased visibility into their networks.
Recommendations for CISOs:
Employ a layered defense, which should include MFA, network segmentation, and endpoint protection.
Gain the highest levels of visibility to bolster data governance, lower risk, and increase compliance.
Focus on cyber hygiene: shore up defenses, update and patch
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
New Summary: 
