Most organizations are not fully ready for a major cyberattack

Readiness trails the threat level

The State of Incident Response Readiness 2026 finds that 73% of organizations would not be “fully ready” if a significant cyberattack occurred tomorrow. Vanson Bourne surveyed 600 senior IT security decision-makers in January and February 2026.

Attacks are recurring: 76% experienced at least one in the past 12 months, and 32% more than one. Fewer than 40% rated documented plans, tabletop exercises, threat hunting, digital forensics, or 24/7 monitoring as highly effective.

Coordination and visibility remain weak points

Coordination is a weakness: 90% expect difficulty aligning stakeholders during a significant incident; 75% say delayed or uncertain legal and communications involvement slows decisions; and 89% cite limited executive or board participation in readiness.

The report says 78% agree that blind spots can preserve attacker access and raise repeat-incident risk across on-premises infrastructure, public cloud, endpoints, SaaS, identity, and OT.

Another 84% worry about attackers moving from corporate IT into OT or industrial control systems, where incidents may affect production, safety, service delivery, and recovery.

AI can support, but not substitute for, readiness

Nearly one-third report extensive AI use across most or all detection and response, up from 25% last year; 63% expect AI to be embedded by 2027. It can accelerate triage, threat hunting, and investigation, but not fix unclear authority, fragmented coordination, or incomplete visibility. Ransomware leads future concerns, followed closely by cloud attacks.

Make response an operating discipline

For leadership teams, the findings make closing operational gaps in incident response a management priority. Define decision rights, escalation paths, approval thresholds, and communications responsibilities before a crisis, then test them in exercises with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Businesses should validate coverage across endpoints, identity, cloud, SaaS, on-premises systems, and OT. They should test whether teams and outside providers can respond quickly across environments. Readiness needs clear authority, tested processes, and reliable visibility.