InfoSec Pros Uncertain About Relationships With Partner Security Teams

Cyber Risk

Cybersecurity In-Depth: Digging into data about the latest attacks, threats, and trends using charts and tables.

Only half of respondents to a recent Dark Reading study felt confident that their third-party business partners would, at least, tell them if a compromise occurred.

Curtis Franklin, Principal Analyst, Omdia

March 17, 2020

1 Min Read

In an interconnected world, incident response is rarely performed in a vacuum. Whether efforts are coordinated with partners, suppliers, customers, or peers, working in concert with other teams can be a huge factor in the success of a particular incident response. In a recent Dark Reading research report we asked cybersecurity professionals how well their IR teams communicated with their partner teams. The results don't indicate catastrophe, but there's still considerable room for improvement.

Just over half of those responding to the survey, 53%, said that they at least communicate with partners if an compromise occurs. Only 10% of professionals said that they have regular communication with partners — the rest leave the communications until there's a likely (or certain) compromise.

That leaves 47% who have no confidence in the effectiveness of their partner communications, particularly when it comes to partners telling them that a compromise has occurred. Aside from the 7% of professionals who are blissfully unaware of the state of partner communications, 40% say that there is some communication — they just worry that it won't be enough to help with the cyber wolves come knocking at their partners' doors.

Download the full research report, The State of Cybersecurity Incident Response, here.

About the Author(s)

Curtis Franklin, Principal Analyst, Omdia

Curtis Franklin Jr. is Principal Analyst at Omdia, focusing on enterprise security management. Previously, he was senior editor of Dark Reading, editor of Light Reading's Security Now, and executive editor, technology, at InformationWeek, where he was also executive producer of InformationWeek's online radio and podcast episodes

Curtis has been writing about technologies and products in computing and networking since the early 1980s. He has been on staff and contributed to technology-industry publications including BYTE, ComputerWorld, CEO, Enterprise Efficiency, ChannelWeb, Network Computing, InfoWorld, PCWorld, Dark Reading, and ITWorld.com on subjects ranging from mobile enterprise computing to enterprise security and wireless networking.

Curtis is the author of thousands of articles, the co-author of five books, and has been a frequent speaker at computer and networking industry conferences across North America and Europe. His most recent books, Cloud Computing: Technologies and Strategies of the Ubiquitous Data Center, and Securing the Cloud: Security Strategies for the Ubiquitous Data Center, with co-author Brian Chee, are published by Taylor and Francis.

When he's not writing, Curtis is a painter, photographer, cook, and multi-instrumentalist musician. He is active in running, amateur radio (KG4GWA), the MakerFX maker space in Orlando, FL, and is a certified Florida Master Naturalist.

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About the Author(s)