The State of Security 2023

Cyberattacks continue to grow in quantity and sophistication at the same time that organizations’ systems become increasingly complex. Security teams, as always, feel the stress. But a surprising outcome of our 2023 State of Security research is that the number of respondents who say they just can’t keep up has shrunk.

Don’t plan a victory parade just yet; 53% of respondents worldwide tell us that keeping up with security requirements is harder than it was two years ago, and that’s still a lot. But the number in 2022 was 66%. Our own security experts, able to spot the dark lining in every silver cloud, note that 2022 didn’t have as many novel developments to throw security teams into disarray; no SolarWinds, no Log4J. “No iceberg for your organizational Titanic,” to quote them directly.

Whether this data represents incremental improvement or a onetime windfall, organizations should press any advantage. Which won’t be easy: Most security teams tell us they’re too stuck in reactive mode to be effectively proactive.