New IBM Cyber Range Helps Organizations Respond to Attacks
IBM Security on Wednesday unveiled its brand new global headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which features a physical Cyber Range designed to allow organizations in the private sector to prepare for and respond to cyber threats.
IBM says the new facility is part of a $200 million investment made this year in its security business, which includes expansion of its incident response capabilities, including new facilities, services and software.
The company believes the facility can be highly useful not only to CISOs and their security teams, but also to other C-level executives, board members and students.
The Cyber Range, located at 75 Binney Street in Cambridge, simulates the network of a corporation that holds one petabyte of information, has over 3,000 users and connects to a simulated version of the Internet. The goal is to create realistic attack scenarios involving hacker tools, ransomware and other types of threats.
“The scenarios will also help train organizations with the necessary steps required to respond quickly in the wake of an incident, from addressing regulatory requirements that vary from country to country and state to state, to client, business partner, media and supply chain notifications and management,” IBM Security said.
IBM Security also announced the launch of its X-Force Command Center in Atlanta and a new incident response and intelligence consulting team called IBM X-Force IRIS. Expanded capacity for its global network of IBM X-Force Command Centers now allow the company to handle more than 1 trillion security events per month.
In 2015, IBM’s security business reached $2 billion in revenue and added 1,000 employees.
Organizations Unprepared for Cyberattacks
IBM Security wants to show that such a cyber range is needed through the results of a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of Resilient, a company acquired by IBM earlier this year.
According to the latest Cyber Resilient Organization study, more than half of respondents said they had suffered at least one data breach in the past two years, but less than one-third of IT and security professionals believe their organizations have a high level of cyber resilience. As for recovery from cyberattacks, 66 percent of those who took part in the survey said their organizations were not prepared.
Seventy-five percent of respondents admitted not having a formal incident response plan applied consistently throughout their company. Of those with a plan in place, more than half said it had not been updated since it was created.
While 31 percent of respondents said their response time decreased in the past year, 41 percent admitted that their response time actually increased.
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*Additional reporting by Mike Lennon