Achieving federal cyber resilience

Cybersecurity is improving globally, and cyber resilience is on the rise. Accenture’s latest research shows that most organizations, including federal agencies, are getting better at defending against cyberattacks. But as defenses evolve, so too do the threats. Attackers have already moved on to indirect targets, such as suppliers and other third parties. This leads to massive vulnerability for federal agencies that rely heavily on a contractor network to achieve their missions.

And while vulnerabilities continue to shift, cybersecurity costs are reaching unsustainable levels. Despite the hefty price tags, security investments often fail to deliver the desired security outcomes. This is particularly challenging for large federal agencies that cannot implement security solutions consistently throughout their organizations. Proliferation of outdated, hodgepodge legacy security solutions complicate progress.

But there is good news. Accenture’s analysis reveals there is a group of standout organizations within the public and private sectors that have cracked the cybersecurity code for innovation. Detailed modeling of cybersecurity performance identified an elite group of leaders — 17 percent globally — that achieved significantly higher levels of performance compared to the rest. Federal agencies outperformed the global sample, with 28 percent qualifying as leaders.

These leading organizations set the bar for performance:

• 4x better at stopping attacks
• 4x better at finding breaches faster
• 3x better at fixing breaches faster
• 2x better at reducing breach impact

Our research also identified specific best practices being adopted by these leaders, including:

• Leaders focus on technologies that provide the greatest benefit
• They scale, train, and collaborate more
• Leaders focus on speed for detection, mobilization, and remediation

Leaders reduce cybersecurity costs

Federal agencies can reduce costs—both in terms of the cybersecurity protection cost to the organization and the wider economic impact—by modeling their behavior after that of the leaders: