The traditional narrative for cybersecurity has been about limited visibility and operational constraints — not business opportunities. These conversations are grounded in various assumptions, such as limited budgets, scarce resources, skills being at a premium, the attack surface growing, and increased complexity. For years, conventional thinking has been that cybersecurity costs a lot, takes a long time, and is more of a cost center than an enabler of growth.
In our upcoming paper, Prosper in the Cyber Economy, published by IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV), we share research findings that challenge some of these assumptions. The IBV partnered with Oxford Economics to interview more than 2,300 business, operations, technology, cyber risk, and cybersecurity executives across 18 industries and 25 countries.
What we found is sentiments around security are changing — according to security leaders and other leaders across the business. Sixty-six percent of respondents now view cybersecurity primarily as a revenue enabler. This makes sense when you consider that organizations with advanced security capabilities are realizing better business outcomes.
To better understand the business benefits associated with security transformation, we assessed respondent organizations’ security maturity in five areas: cyber and risk strategy, foundational capabilities, security operating models, business integration, and ecosystem coordination. Respondents fell into four stages of maturity with stark differences between the least and most mature groups — distinctions that reveal themselves in terms of operational performance.
Notably, the most mature security organizations see a 43% higher revenue growth rate over five years than the least mature organizations.
Shared responsibility is based on organizations working with partners to maintain a consistent security posture. Our analysis suggests that shared responsibility opens the door to additional downstream ..
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