Most enterprises are not ready for the next major cyberattack, according to Sygnia’s 2026 State of Incident Response Readiness report. The study, based on a survey of 600 senior IT security decision makers across 10 markets, shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents do not believe their organisation would be fully ready if a serious cyber incident happened tomorrow.
Readiness Gap Widens
The report paints a picture of incident response programmes that exist on paper but often fail under pressure. While most organisations say they have the core building blocks in place, fewer than 40% consider those components highly effective, which suggests that plans, tooling and monitoring do not always translate into coordinated execution during a real crisis.
That gap is especially visible in how organisations handle stakeholder coordination, legal involvement and executive decision-making. Ninety percent of respondents said they would struggle to coordinate stakeholders during a significant incident, and 89% said board or executive involvement in incident response readiness remains limited.
Visibility Is Still Fragmented
A major theme of the report is that security teams still lack consistent visibility across the environments that matter most. Respondents reported blind spots across public cloud, on-premises systems, endpoints, SaaS and OT/ICS environments, with 78% agreeing that those blind spots can allow attacker access to persist and increase the risk of repeat incidents.
That becomes even more worrying when incidents can move from corporate IT into operational systems. The report says 84% are concerned about attackers crossing into OT/ICS environments, while many security teams still lack the unified visibility needed to confidently track, validate and contain a breach as it spreads.
Executive Alignment Remains Weak
Sygnia’s findings suggest that incident response is still too often treated as a technical function rather than an enterprise-wide crisis process. Legal, communications and business stakeholders are frequently brought in too late, slowing decisions and turning response into a reactive cycle instead of a coordinated one.
This lack of alignment can extend the time it takes to contain an incident, communicate impact and protect operations. The report argues that stronger governance, pre-defined escalation paths and regular executive rehearsal are essential if organisations want to reduce the business cost of a cyberattack.
AI Is Changing Response
The report also finds that AI is becoming part of the incident response stack. Nearly a third of organisations already use AI extensively across threat detection and response, and that number is expected to rise sharply over the next year as security teams look for faster triage, investigation and containment support.
However, the report is clear that AI is not a substitute for disciplined response planning. Instead, it works best when embedded into structured workflows that improve monitoring, digital forensics, threat hunting and investigation, rather than being treated as a standalone solution.
What Leaders Need To Do
Sygnia’s research points to a clear conclusion: incident response must be treated as a continuous business capability, not a checklist. Organisations that close visibility gaps, strengthen cross-functional governance and rehearse response under realistic conditions are more likely to contain incidents quickly and reduce long-term damage.
The report also warns that many enterprises are considering switching incident response providers as their contracts end, largely because they want more proactive readiness support and broader coverage across IT, OT and cloud environments. That suggests buyers are now looking for long-term partners that can help with preparation before an incident and support containment when a crisis actually hits.
