CISO Survey 2026: The State of Incident Response Readiness

90% of senior cybersecurity decision makers identify public cloud as a top visibility and vulnerability concern.

78% of senior cybersecurity decision makers indicate that potential visibility gaps or blind spots could slow detection or investigation of malicious activity.

84% of senior cybersecurity decision makers point to IT vulnerabilities as a worrisome bridge into OT/ICS environments.

32% of organizations experienced more than one cyber attack in the last 12 months.

63% of senior cybersecurity decision makers anticipate boosting incident response by embedding AI across threat detection and incident response activities.

83% of organizations in crypto and decentralized finance, 79% in retail, and 76% in manufacturing experienced cyber attacks.

89% of senior cybersecurity decision makers report limited executive or board involvement in incident response readiness and decision making.

46% of security decision makers identify ransomware attacks as a leading concern, 44% identify cloud environment breaches, 37% identify email compromise, 37% identify data theft, and 35% identify supply chain compromise.

47% report operational shutdown, 41% report data loss, 41% report reputational damage, and 40% report lost revenue as impacts of cyber attacks in the last 12 months.

Almost one-third of organizations report extensive AI use across most or all threat detection and incident response activities, up from 25% last year.

76% of organizations experienced at least one cyber attack in the last 12 months.

73% of senior cybersecurity decision makers say their organization would not be fully ready to execute under pressure if a significant cybersecurity attack occurred tomorrow.

90% of senior cybersecurity decision makers anticipate coordination breakdowns in the event of a cyber incident.

86% of private healthcare security decision makers report legal and communications challenges when responding to a cyber attack.

75% of senior cybersecurity decision makers report legal and communications issues slow down decision making during incident response.

99% of organizations have formal incident response plans.

63% of organizations expect to embed AI as a baseline capability in day-to-day security operations by 2027.