The majority of surveyed business leaders in Asia, including in Singapore and Malaysia, believe they have the right plans in place to recover from a cyberattack. However, when those plans were put to the test, their ability to be resilient post-breach did not come close to hitting the mark.
As a result, it is evident that a critical gap exists between readiness and resilience, which can be crippling for enterprise organisations trying to serve customers and protect brand reputations following an attack.
These are from a report from Commvault, based on a study conducted by Tech Research Asia. It covered 1,218 organisations across eight markets. These include Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea and Hong Kong.
There were 154 respondents who are based in Singapore, of which half represented enterprises.
The survey reveals that while nine in 10 organisations in Singapore and nearly as many in Malaysia believe they can withstand a cyber breach, that confidence crumbles under pressure.
When tested, only a third of organisations could rally an effective response. Many were left scrambling—with 12% admitting they had no playbook, only panic.
Further, data volumes across Asia grew by 40% in the last one year, with 63% of organisations now operating in hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures.
Yet, 38% of organisations say they lack full visibility into the relationships, metadata, and dependencies across their cloud environments—visibility that’s essential for a coordinated and effective recovery.
“One thing is very clear. Once a breach occurs, even the most meticulously crafted plans can fall apart,” said Gareth Russell, Field CTO for APAC.
“In today’s dynamic and increasingly complex digital landscape, maintaining continuous operations is non-negotiable,” said Russell. “Organisations must elevate their cybersecurity maturity by regularly testing incident response plans, auditing AI tools for risk, and building strong data management foundations.”
Expected recovery timelines also reveal expectations that are out of line with reality across the region. About three-quarters (72%) of business leaders in Asia believe they can recover within five days of a cybersecurity event, and nearly a quarter (23%) expect full recovery in just one day.
However, the reality is starkly different: IT leaders report it takes at least 3-4 weeks to restore even a minimum level of business operation.
While a majority (85%) of organisations have incident response plans (IRPs), only 30% test all mission-critical workloads – leaving significant blind spots in cyber recovery.
Consequently, when breaches occur, the impact is often severe — 83% of companies experienced data exfiltration, 50% lost access to all data, and only 40% recovered 100% of their data.
Organisations with low recovery maturity were more than twice as likely to fail to recover all data and 34% more likely to be locked out completely.
“Boards and executive teams are placing big bets on digital and AI transformation, but recovery is where those bets are won or lost,” said Michel Borst, area VP for Asia at Commvault.
“Confidence without capability can lead to business failure when the worst happens,” said Borst. “What organisations need is minimum viable readiness—a baseline level of cyber resilience so they can respond, recover, and resume operations following an attack.”
