The State of Security Data Management in 2022

Today, Cribl is releasing The State of Security Data Management 2022 in collaboration with CITE Research. The report examines the challenges that enterprises are facing as they work to balance evolving business priorities with cyber threats. The report was conducted in September 2022 and surveyed 1,000 senior-level IT and security decision-makers.

The survey found that, although most organizations are confident in their data management strategy, few believe it’s actually sustainable. Two out of three organizations acknowledge that their strategy isn’t sustainable for more than a year; this kind of reactive, short-term strategy could impact both threat visibility and attack response time.

This lack of a sustainable architecture comes at a time when organizations are using more tools–63% currently use more than 25- 40% planning to add even more in the next 12 months. The average organization manages over 30 different data sources. This survey highlights the risks that organizations face with managing the growing number of data sources and tools. As observability and security data continues growing at a 25% compounding annual growth rate, enterprises that don’t plan for the future will be at risk of mounting costs, slow response times, and a weakened security posture. The findings in this report highlight the need for organizations to build a sustainable plan to address rapidly growing data volumes

Additional key survey results include:

• Despite acknowledging that their strategies are not sustainable, 92% of organizations state that they have confidence in their current strategy.
• It’s clear that the two disciplines have now merged: nine out of 10 respondents say IT and security teams rely on the same data, tools and strategies.
• The increase in cybersecurity threats has led organizations to rely on external vendors for help with incident response and managed detection and response. The majority of organizations seek greater control over their data to drive business performance.
• 72% of organizations believe that having more control over their data would improve visibility, 65% believe it would improve response and remediation time, and 62% believe it would improve alerts.

Download The State of Security Data Management 2022

Survey Methodology

In September 2022, CITE conducted a survey in partnership with Cribl. The 1,000 respondents were based in the US with Director level or above job titles in software development, IT, or C-Suite. Respondents came from a variety of industries and worked at organizations with greater than $100 million revenue.

“We all know cybersecurity teams are under incredible pressure, but what these results indicate is that beneath the surface of what the headlines espouse — sophisticated attackers, expanding attack surface, skills shortages — lies a more entrenched problem for cybersecurity teams: data. Practitioners are drowning in a deluge of data from myriad, siloed sources, limiting organizations’ visibility and hindering their ability to swiftly respond to potential threats. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel: We’re trending towards greater collaboration between IT and security teams and increased interoperability between tools, which will boost the cybersecurity industry in coming years.” – Clint Sharp, CEO and co-founder of Cribl.