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"How Organizations Are Managing Incident Response"

Most organizations lack dedicated incident response staff and rely on fragmented tools. There is a fundamental misalignment between the threats organizations face and their ability to effectively contain and recover from attacks.

Dark Reading examined the current state of incident response (IR) capabilities across organizations in 2026 and found a critical disconnect between the frequency of security incidents and organizations' preparedness to manage them effectively. Based on survey data from 130 IT and cybersecurity professionals familiar with their organizations' incident response processes and capabilities, the report uncovers significant vulnerabilities in how organizations detect, contain, and recover from security incidents.

While nearly all organizations experienced critical security incidents in the past year, the majority lack fundamental IR infrastructure. A striking finding shows that only 40% of organizations maintain a dedicated incident response team, and half allocate 70% or more of their security resources to incident prevention rather than response, creating a dangerous imbalance in their security posture.

Dark Reading queried IT and security professionals from organizations across more than a dozen different industry sectors. Respondents included individuals with significant IT authority, including IT executives (CIOs, CTOs), VPs of security, directors of information security, and other titles.

• A central theme of the report is the gap between the availability of tools and their integration. Nearly half of the respondents said the determination of incident extent was one of the most time-consuming IR tasks.
• While threat intelligence is widely used for incident prioritization and triage by more than 90% of respondents, its application for proactive threat hunting remains limited.
• The report also explores the role of emerging technologies in addressing IR gaps, noting widespread adoption and recognition of machine learning and AI-driven security capabilities as core infrastructure.
• There is also a paradox in investment priorities: despite acknowledging the effectiveness of advanced IR tools, organizations plan to allocate resources primarily toward traditional perimeter-focused technologies, suggesting that purchasing decisions are influenced by factors beyond performance metrics alone.

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