73% of Organizations Say They Are Not Fully Ready for a Major Cyberattack

Most organizations have incident response plans, security tools, and technical teams in place. Yet new research suggests that many still lack the coordination, visibility, and executive alignment needed to withstand a serious cyberattack. According to The State of Incident Response Readiness 2026, based on a survey of 600 senior IT security decision makers conducted by Vanson Bourne in January

The referenced report finds that 73% of organizations do not consider themselves fully ready for a major cyberattack, despite most having incident response plans, tools, and technical teams in place.[1][7] This lack of readiness is attributed primarily to gaps in coordination, executive and board alignment, governance, and visibility across complex technology environments, rather than to missing security technologies.[1][3][7] From a RealGround perspective, these findings indicate that many organizations likely have similar readiness and governance gaps for AI-enabled systems and incident response, increasing the risk that AI agents, models, and data are deployed without robust incident playbooks, clear decision rights, or tested escalation paths. An AI Security Readiness Assessment can help organizations translate their general incident response shortcomings into concrete AI governance controls, role definitions, and cross-functional testing so that cyber and AI incidents can be detected, contained, and managed under a unified, compliant operating model.