Unsecured Devices Cost Southeast Asian Businesses Up to USD$1 Million: Tanium Research

The Human Cost of Cyber Exposure

The data exposes a disconnect between confidence and reality. While 59% of respondents describe themselves as “very confident” in their ability to track devices, 43% admit that more than 10% of those devices are unknown, unmanaged, or non-compliant. A further 41% say they are only “somewhat confident” in maintaining real-time visibility. In sectors like healthcare, where digitisation is bringing legacy clinical devices, such as imaging systems and patient monitors, onto enterprise networks, these blind spots carry consequences that put patients at risk.

Only 29% of organisations can detect a critical issue within minutes. For 55%, identifying a single threat indicator takes hours, while attackers move freely through their environments. In the telecommunications industry, where a single infrastructure failure can cascade into hours of disruption, this inability to detect and isolate an issue in real time is an operational crisis.

Critical Infrastructure, Financial Services, and the Compliance Gap

Patching lags just as badly. Only 16% can address critical vulnerabilities across the majority of their systems within 24 hours. Sixty percent of organisations are still relying on partially automated processes. In financial services, where core banking infrastructure often runs on legacy systems that cannot be patched without planned downtime, every delayed update is a window of exposure that regulators and attackers are watching.

The compliance burden compounds this further. Half of ASEAN organisations face quarterly IT asset audits, yet only 50% can prepare audit-ready data in under a week, with 46% needing between one and four weeks. As Singapore’s Cyber Security Act tightens expectations around compliance, public sector agencies and operators of critical infrastructure still relying on manual audit preparation are falling behind the regulatory curve.

“Geopolitical conflict has gone digital, while AI is accelerating both innovation and attacks. The devices connecting it all are increasingly outside the visibility of the teams responsible for protecting them,” said Satyen Desai, RVP, ASEAN, Tanium.

“This research reaffirms what we hear from customers across the region. The misconception between confidence and actual control is real, it is widening, and it is expensive. Organisations that consolidate onto a unified platform, automate their response cycles, and build continuous compliance into their operations are already seeing the difference. The question for every leader in this region is whether they act before an incident forces their hand,” he added.

Budgets Are Moving

Seventy-nine per cent of respondents plan to invest in new security solutions within 12 months, which is a clear signal this has become a board-level priority. The challenge will be investing in the right way: the top frustrations cited, such as poor visibility, slow response times, and too many disconnected tools, point to fragmentation, not insufficient spend. Organisations that consolidate onto unified, real-time platforms will be best positioned to close the gaps that matter.

Tanium’s full findings and recommendations for IT and security leaders are available at www.tanium.com.