Tanium Study: Global Firms Recognize Importance of Business Resilience but Are Struggling to Take Action

Emeryville, Calif., 14 November 2018 – New research released today by Tanium, has found significant gaps in Business Resilience across organizations globally. The Resilience Gap study, which surveyed over 4,000 business decision makers across the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan found that while 96% of the global business decision makers believe that making technology resilient to business disruptions should be core to their firm’s wider business strategy, the reality is very different. In fact, only 54% of respondents claim that it definitely is.

Barriers to achieving Business Resilience

Despite 96% of respondents claiming that Business Resilience is important to their organization, several barriers to achieving Business Resilience remain, with clear challenges between internal organizational structures and access to the right skills and technology. Over a third (34%) blame their organization’s growing complexity, while, one fifth (20%) blame siloed business units. Looking to their team and tools, a third (33%) say the issue lies with the hackers being more sophisticated than IT teams, 21% claim that they don’t have the skills needed within the company to accurately detect cyber breaches in real-time and almost a quarter (24%) claim that poor visibility of entry points is the biggest barrier to Business Resilience.

“In 2018 alone, companies will spend over one trillion dollars making their enterprises even more digital*- launching more applications, expanding IT services, and creating new connections with their partners and customers,” said David Damato, Chief Security Officer at Tanium. “While this may seem positive, the speed and complexity of technology has led organizations to purchase multiple tools to solve for IT security and operations challenges. In turn, this has created a fragmented collection of endpoint management and security solutions which is leaving the enterprise environment brittle, vulnerable and lacking the Business Resilience needed to adequately mitigate threats. We believe that Business Resilience is fundamental to any strategy for long-term growth, yet the findings suggest that many businesses still have a long way to go to achieve resilience.”

Responsibility for Business Resilience

One of the main reasons why organizations are unable to achieve Business Resilience against disruptions such as cyber threats is due to growing confusion internally on where the responsibility for resilience lies. Almost a third (30%) believe it should be the responsibility of the CIO or Head of IT, whilst 23% say every employee should be responsible, and 13% state responsibility lies with the CEO alone. This disparity is dramatic across countries, with a third of business decision makers in the US claiming it’s not just one person’s responsibility but everybody’s responsibility to ensure Business Resilience.

Impact of a lack of resilience

A lack of Business Resilience can also severely impact a firm’s bottom line. A third (33%) of organizations say they could not or don’t know if they could calculate the impact of a cyber breach on indirect cost from lost revenue and productivity, and 28% admit they wouldn’t know if they would be able to calculate the financial cost incurred for response efforts. In addition, 29% of organizations state they would not know if they would be able to calculate the impact of the loss or exposure of protected data, particularly concerning in the year that GDPR has come into force.

“Businesses are becoming entirely dependent upon their technology platforms. But if that technology stops running, the business will, too – with potentially disastrous consequences for sales, customer confidence, and brand equity – not to mention productivity,” added Damato.

“Business Resilience is the practice to ensure that the technology running the business can adapt to disruption. To deliver resilience, governments and enterprise organizations require a new approach that moves beyond a simple focus on prevention and recovery. Organizations need to ensure that data is accurate and actionable and that starts with having real time visibility and control over all computing devices. Without uniting teams and reducing the fragmentation, teams will continue to invest in new point solutions and ultimately struggle to make the business resilient,” concluded Damato.

ENDS

Methodology

Tanium commissioned independent market research specialist, Censuswide to undertake the research upon which this report is based. A total of 4022 business decision makers were surveyed from July – September 2018 in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. The respondents were from organizations with at least 1,000 employees, international offices and could be from any sector.

About Tanium

Tanium offers a unified endpoint management and security platform that is built for the world’s most demanding IT environments. Many of the world’s largest and most sophisticated organizations, including more than half of the Fortune 100, top retailers and financial institutions, and four branches of the US Armed Forces rely on Tanium to make confident decisions, operate efficiently and effectively, and remain resilient against disruption. Tanium ranks 7th on the Forbes list of “Top 100 Private Companies in Cloud Computing” for 2019 and 10th on FORTUNE’s list of the “100 Best Medium Workplaces.” Visit us at www.tanium.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Disclaimer

Tanium’s statements regarding its plans, directions and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice at Tanium’s sole discretion. Information regarding potential future products is intended to outline our general product direction and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. Information about potential future products may not be incorporated into any contract. The information mentioned regarding potential future products is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality. The development, release and timing of any future features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion.

Media Contacts

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^{Source: IDC, IDC Spending Guide, December 2017}