APAC organizations struggle with cyber readiness, reveals Commvault report

In Singapore, 9 in 10 organizations in Singapore believe they are prepared for a cyberattack, but 12% had no playbook at all when a breach occurred.

According to Commvault’s State of Data Readiness – Asia report, many organizations across the region may be overestimating their ability to recover from a cyberattack. Findings from the report revealed that only 30% of organizations in Asia with incident response plans (IRPs) test all mission-critical workloads, leaving significant gaps in recovery preparedness. Many businesses still face prolonged outages, data loss, and incomplete recoveries.

The report also revealed that 72% of business leaders in Asia believe they can recover within five days of a cybersecurity event, and 23% expect full recovery in just one day. However, the reality is starkly different, it takes at least 3-4 weeks to restore even a minimum level of business operation.

In Singapore, 9 in 10 organizations in Singapore believe they are prepared for a cyberattack, but 12% had no playbook at all when a breach occurred. This not only delays the time it takes to recover but also can have a huge financial impact due to the business disruption.

Gareth Russell, Field CTO, APAC, Commvault explains more about this situation to CRN Asia. Russell also shares the role partners play in ensuring businesses are well prepared to deal with any cybersecurity situation.

Why are businesses in APAC still struggling to cope post-breach of a cyberattack?

What looks good on paper often doesn’t hold up in practice. Many organizations in Asia are confident in their ability to manage a cyber incident until one actually happens. According to Commvault’s latest research, 90% businesses in Singapore and Malaysia claim to be prepared, yet only a third of them managed to respond effectively when put to the test, resulting in a serious disconnect between planning and execution.

When it comes to recovery, expectations versus reality is also startling. Around 72% of business leaders in APAC expect to recover within five days, and 23% aim for just one day. The truth? It often takes 3-4 weeks to restore even minimal operations. During that stretch, most organisations face data exfiltration (83%), complete data loss (50%), and only 40% manage full data recovery.

The reality of organizational resilience is often at odds with perceived readiness. Many organisations have detection tools and backups in place but lack the process maturity of regular testing and validating clean recoveries. Recovery efforts often take weeks, not days, which far exceeds business expectations and causes extended disruption.

What are they doing wrong and what can they do better to fix this problem?

Too many companies assume that having backups or an incident response plan is enough, but in the event of a breach or disruption, responding under pressure becomes far more difficult.

Without regular testing and clarity around which systems matter most, organisations are left scrambling when incidents occur, and in the worst cases, making it up as they go. Businesses need to rethink their baseline and embrace the concept we call Minimum Viability - the ability to maintain essential operations during and after a cyberattack with minimal disruption.

It’s not just about infrastructure. It’s about people, processes, and how quickly you can recover minimum business operations. That means running simulations, identifying what’s core to the business, streamlining recovery steps, and assuring your data before you restore it.

How is Commvault working with partners to help organisations deal with this?

We’re a partner‑obsessed company. Our partners are critical to achieving our goal of delivering resilience that works in the real world.

Through our partner ecosystem, we’re delivering solutions and experiences that help make recovery faster, safer, and more reliable. For example, we introduced Commvault Recovery Range, a cyber range simulation experience built with SimSpace, that allows organisations to train in a realistic attack scenario, taking the Red Teaming and Blue Teaming exercise one step further with the inclusion of a Recovery Team. Here, CISOs and CIOs can sharpen their response strategies in a safe, controlled setting and also test out their abilities to make a clean recovery.

Additionally, we collaborated with Kyndryl and Pure Storage bringing together infrastructure, managed services, and compliance expertise to support large-scale, secure recoveries. The solution is built with evolving regulatory demands in mind - supporting frameworks like DORA, NIS2, APRA CPS 230, and more.

Together, these partnerships enable our customers to move beyond basic preparedness and build real, enterprise-grade, tested resilience into the fabric of their operations.

Lastly, can AI help businesses have better cyber readiness?

AI is becoming integral to modern digital enterprise today, offering real-time data insights, improved productivity, and smarter automation. But it’s a double-edged sword. Along with the benefits come serious risks such as algorithmic bias, hallucinations, data poisoning, and increasingly, AI is being weaponised by threat actors to launch large-scale, targeted attacks.

Alarmingly, 58% of organizations haven’t conducted thorough audits on the security implications of AI tools prior to deploying. This lack of oversight introduces vulnerabilities that are often not fully understood until it’s too late.

Despite these risks, the value of AI is undeniable. At Commvault, we’re committed to using AI responsibly. Our AI co-pilot, Arlie, delivers actionable insights and outcomes to save time, quickly resolve threats, and fight complexity. It’s built to be transparent, secure, and easy to use, without requiring deep technical expertise.

At the end of the day, AI can help enhance cyber readiness but only when guided by strong governance, ethical frameworks, and purpose-driven design.