WATERLOO, ONTARIO – October 4, 2022 – BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) today published new research highlighting the challenges organizations in all major sectors face in maintaining and improving their overall cybersecurity posture.

The survey of 405 senior IT, networking, and security decision-makers in the US, Canada and the UK revealed 83% of organizations agreed building cybersecurity programs is expensive due to required tools, licenses, and personnel, and 80% agreed it’s challenging to fill specialized security roles. Most organizations (78%) have an incident management process, but half (49%) agree they lack the teams and tools to be effective 24/7/365. Evolving security threats (53%) and the task of integrating new technology (53%) are cited as top challenges in maintaining security posture.

“Strengthening cyber defenses and maintaining operation around-the-clock calls for businesses to make significant investments in sophisticated tools and highly skilled staff. Organizations often find their IT staff are stretched thin or not skilled enough to manage security technologies,” said Nathan Jenniges, Vice President, Cybersecurity Product Strategy at BlackBerry. “With 24×7 monitoring and mitigation, Managed XDR could be the missing link, particularly for critical infrastructure organizations, which are greater targets for cyberattacks with potentially damaging results.”

The survey results, highlighted in BlackBerry’s Midmarket Game Plan: Shore Up Security and Resilience with Managed XDR, also addressed awareness and perceptions of Extended Detection and Response (XDR), a cybersecurity solution that collects and analyzes data from multiple sources to predict, prevent, discover, and respond to cyberattacks around-the-clock. Managed XDR can provide significant benefits to companies that understand and value the expanded protection XDR can provide but lack the resources to implement it on their own.

Additional key findings of the survey include:

• Acute Cybersecurity Challenges for Healthcare and Energy Sectors
  • 77% of healthcare respondents and 72% of energy and utility respondents said the amount of work required to create their own dedicated security operations was daunting
  • Healthcare respondents were the least likely (63%) to agree they have an incident management process to handle threats
  • While 60% of energy and utility companies have a Security Operations Center (SOC) or equivalent in place, only 1 in 5 (20%) said they have the right skillsets to adopt XDR; as a result only 1 in 3 (33%) were confident in their ability to gain a strong return from XDR

• Use of IT/Cybersecurity Managed Services to Plug the Talent Gap
  • 80% of respondents use a managed service provider for at least some of their cybersecurity workloads
  • 45% say the ability to free up existing resources is the top anticipated benefit of leveraging managed IT/cybersecurity services
  • 42% report a better ability to address skills and resource gaps using managed services

• XDR Awareness and Adoption
  • 79% are likely to consider an XDR solution over the next 12 months; large enterprises and manufacturing organizations most likely to consider an XDR solution
  • 77% of those considering an XDR solution plan to outsource some or all XDR management
  • 51% who plan to outsource XDR management are extremely confident in their ability to gain a return from XDR, as opposed to 35% managing XDR themselves
  • Small businesses (53%) are most likely to be concerned about having the skills necessary to adopt XDR, compared to large enterprises (47%) and commercial businesses (41%)

Click here to view the full report.

The survey results are included in a new IDC report sponsored by BlackBerry titled Managed XDR Evolution Advances Cyber Protection. This report covers building a resilient, scalable, and cohesive strategy with XDR and will be released on October 6th, 2022.

For more information on how BlackBerry’s comprehensive, prevention-first, AI-driven cybersecurity solutions can help your business prepare for, prevent, detect and respond to cyber threats, please visit BlackBerry.com/Cyber.

Notes to editor: Research conducted in June and July 2022 by Foundry on behalf of BlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB), into 405 people (in the US, Canada, and the UK) who are senior IT/Networking/Security decision-makers at companies with over 500 employees.