Organisational Friction Hampers Cyber Defence Efforts, Cisco Report Reveals

Organisational friction is emerging as a major barrier to effective cyber defence, according to Cisco's latest Relentless Defence Report.

The report surveyed 8,000 security professionals across 30 markets and found that 91% of organisations globally experienced a material, business-disrupting cyber incident in the past 12 months. More than one-third of these incidents involved an AI-enhanced attack.

Cisco's research suggests that organisational capabilities are a major contributor to this problem. Among security practitioners struggling with their defences, around six in ten identify organisational capabilities as areas that could most improve their security posture.

The report assesses organisations across three dimensions: coverage, or how comprehensively they can protect their environments; speed, or how quickly they can detect, respond to and remediate threats; and friction, or the organisational factors that slow them down. The global average score is 64 out of 100.