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Cisco Report: Internal Friction, Not Missing Tools, Is Slowing Australian Cyber Defence

Australian Cyber Security Magazine · 13 Oct 2026

Key Takeaway Before buying more security tools, make sure someone clearly owns incident decisions, approvals are quick, and your key security data is visible in one place.

Cisco's Relentless Defence Report found that 93% of Australian organisations had a material, business-disrupting cyber incident in the past 12 months, and more than 37% of those involved an AI-enhanced attack. Australia scored 62 out of 100 on the Cisco Defence Index, placing it in the report's "Reactive" tier and slightly below the global average of 64.

The report argues the main problem is organisational friction. Autonomous AI agents can act in seconds, so delays from approvals, unclear ownership and fragmented data create risk. About 63% of Australian security practitioners said reducing friction would do the most to improve their defences, ahead of technology-related blockers. Spending is not closing the gap: 89% of enterprises increased security budgets over two years, yet 45% said incidents stayed the same (33%) or rose (12%). Only 46% said security, networking and IT teams work as one team with shared visibility and tooling. Meanwhile, 40% said they spend more time collecting and correlating data than addressing threats, and 30% have no consistent way to measure security performance.

AI is helping where it is used. More than 88% of practitioners reported detection and response gains of at least 25%, and 35% said AI is significantly reducing operational burden. However, fewer than half (39%) of organisations have extensively deployed AI-powered security capabilities.

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Summarised by CISO AI from Australian Cyber Security Magazine, written with Claude Sonnet 5.5. We link back to every original so you can read it yourself.