{"id":363160,"date":"2025-11-12T22:20:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T16:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/?p=363160"},"modified":"2025-11-12T22:20:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T16:50:03","slug":"new-report-reveals-92-of-breached-organizations-admit-stronger-cyber-hygiene-could-have-prevented-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/new-report-reveals-92-of-breached-organizations-admit-stronger-cyber-hygiene-could-have-prevented-incident\/","title":{"rendered":"New Report Reveals 92% of Breached Organizations Admit Stronger Cyber Hygiene Could Have Prevented Incident"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><i>Swimlane study finds most security teams are struggling with the basics, but 84% say AI and automation are key to restoring cyber hygiene<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>DENVER&#8211;(BUSINESS WIRE)&#8211;According to a newly released report from<b>\u00a0<\/b>Swimlane,\u00a0the leader in agentic AI automation for every security function,<b>\u00a0<\/b>most enterprises still struggle with the fundamentals of cyber defense. The report,\u00a0\u201cCracks in the Foundation: Why Basic Security Still Fails,\u201d\u00a0reveals that 92% of organizations that experienced a security incident in the past year believe stronger cyber hygiene could have prevented it, underscoring how persistent execution gaps continue to leave organizations exposed to preventable risk.<\/p>\n<p>Despite unprecedented spending on cybersecurity tools and services, foundational security practices remain inconsistent and often overlooked. To better understand why these basics continue to falter, Swimlane surveyed 500 IT and security decision-makers across the U.S. and U.K. The findings show how operational blind spots, leadership misalignment, and slow patching processes are leaving even well-resourced organizations exposed, while forward-thinking teams are increasingly turning to AI and automation to close execution gaps and drive continuous cyber resilience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fundamentals of security shouldn\u2019t be the hardest part, but they remain the weakest link,\u201d said <strong>Michael Lyborg, CISO at Swimlane.<\/strong> \u201cToo many teams treat hygiene as a checklist instead of a living process. Intelligent automation makes it continuous, measurable, and built-in, turning resilience from a goal into a deliverable outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Key Takeaways<\/b><\/p>\n<ul class=\"bwlistdisc\">\n<li><b>The Basics Still Break Security:\u00a0<\/b>Over half (52%) of organizations say their greatest weakness is the human element, including employee training and awareness. Two-thirds (67%) audit user access privileges quarterly or less often, and 64% fail to continuously assess vendor and supplier security after onboarding.<\/li>\n<li><b>Cyber Hygiene Still Isn\u2019t a Leadership Priority:\u00a0<\/b>Only 32% of respondents say hygiene and resilience rank among their C-suite\u2019s top priorities, suggesting leadership continues to underestimate how much fundamentals drive overall risk reduction.<\/li>\n<li><b>Process Delays Widen Vulnerability Windows:\u00a0<\/b>Nearly three-quarters (73%) of organizations take longer than 24 hours to apply critical patches; one in four take between 8 and 30 days.<\/li>\n<li><b>Most Incidents Are Still Preventable:\u00a0<\/b>Sixty-six percent of organizations faced a security incident in the past year, and 92% say better hygiene could have prevented it. Just 15% of organizations self-identify as \u201cleading\u201d in cyber hygiene maturity.<\/li>\n<li><b>AI and Automation Are Closing the Fundamentals Gap:\u00a0<\/b>Eighty-four percent say AI and automation enhance cyber hygiene, and 64% report these tools have increased organizational focus on the basics. Expanding AI usage and expertise ranks as the top improvement area (41%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cCyber resilience depends on operational discipline as much as technological sophistication,\u201d said <strong>Cody Cornell, Co-Founder and CEO at Swimlane.<\/strong> \u201cWe\u2019re at a turning point where agentic AI can finally make the fundamentals automatic. The organizations that embed AI agents into daily automated workflows will transform hygiene from a persistent challenge into a lasting competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swimlane study finds most security teams are struggling with the basics, but 84% say AI and automation are key to restoring cyber hygiene DENVER&#8211;(BUSINESS WIRE)&#8211;According to a newly released report from\u00a0Swimlane,\u00a0the leader in agentic AI automation for every security function,\u00a0most enterprises still struggle with the fundamentals of cyber defense. The report,\u00a0\u201cCracks in the Foundation: Why [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14083],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-363160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-technology-industry-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363161,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363160\/revisions\/363161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}