Security Wave of Change

Insights and Strategic Directions from 60 security leaders in Australia and New Zealand

The CISO Wave of Change is a survey of over 60 respondents (CISOs and Security enterprise leaders) across Australia and New Zealand from October 2023 to March 2024, identifying their challenges, strategic focus, investment opportunities, and digital priorities. These insights can help industry participants navigate the complexities of the modern landscape, develop effective strategies, and achieve sustainable growth in an increasingly dynamic environment.

Key Findings

Top priorities in cybersecurity planning and assessment: As organisations continue to strengthen their cybersecurity posture, identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities has emerged as the top priority.

• Most respondents are focused on addressing vulnerabilities, with 51% prioritising the identification and mitigation of these risks, while 18% are focussed on enhancing incident response capabilities.

Primary driver to explore cybersecurity solution: As organisations continue to move to the cloud-first environments and cyber-attacks become increasing prominence and sophisticated, the evolving threat landscape is the main driver for exploring new cybersecurity technologies.

• As organisations explore cybersecurity technologies to add to their roadmap, a majority of respondents 64%, report being driven to do so by the need to tackle the evolving threat landscape.
• 15% of respondents are focused on solutions that help them meet compliance and regulatory requirements, achieve operational efficiency and cost reduction, and stay abreast of technological advancements.

Current infrastructure enhancements: As the threat landscape continues to evolve, enhancing current cybersecurity infrastructure is crucial for building a resilient security framework.

• 51% of respondents are focused on data protection and privacy, while 28% are concentrating on network security, ensuring robust defences against network-based threats.
• 10% cite user training and awareness as their focus, and the other 10% are interested in application security.