Hong Kong organisations are falling behind global peers in cyber resilience, with Cisco’s Relentless Defense Report scoring them an average of 59 out of 100, below the global average of 64. Only 2% of Hong Kong organisations qualified as “Relentless Defenders”, Cisco’s top-performing group, compared with 8% globally.
The report, based on a survey of more than 8,000 security professionals across 30 markets including Hong Kong, found that 89% of Hong Kong organisations suffered a material, business-disrupting cyber incident in the past 12 months. Globally, 91% experienced such an incident, and more than one in three involved an AI-enhanced attack.
Cisco argues that the biggest constraint is often organisational rather than technical. Among practitioners who said they were struggling, around six in 10 pointed to coordination, approvals and access to data as the main barriers to stronger defence.
In Hong Kong, 46% of organisations said security, networking and IT teams operate as one team with shared visibility and tooling. Meanwhile, 43% of Hong Kong respondents said critical insights are missed because data sits out of reach, and 44% struggle to translate business metrics into information that can influence executive decision-making.
“You cannot govern what you cannot see, and you cannot trust what you cannot govern,” said Sunil Potti, senior vice president and general manager, Security, Observability, and Data Platform at Cisco. “This unified approach to AI trust is the only way for organizations and consumers to fully embrace the promise of this technology.”
AI is improving defenders’ speed, but adoption remains uneven. Globally, more than eight in 10 practitioners reported detection and response gains of at least 25%, yet fewer than half have extensively deployed AI-powered security capabilities. Only one-third have extensively deployed AI agents in security operations, where AI could most directly reduce workload.
Concerns over data exposure, compromised systems and third-party handling are slowing adoption. Just 54% of respondents are very confident they could detect and respond to a compromised AI agent.
Cisco’s Relentless Defenders stand out through organisational discipline rather than spending alone. Globally, 83% operate as a single coordinated security team with shared visibility and tools, while 86% apply consistent controls to AI agents and non-human identities. Among organisations that increased security spending, 71% of Relentless Defenders saw incidents fall, compared with 39% of other defenders.
For Hong Kong CISOs, the findings suggest that improving cyber resilience in 2027 will require shared visibility across security, IT and network teams, clearer decision rights, unified data access and governance for AI agents—not simply additional security tools.
