Bridewell Survey Finds 93% of UK Critical Infrastructure Organisations Report Cyber Attacks

Oct 19, 2026 · Original Report (PDF) ↗

Original report publisher: not verified. Report discovered via Awesome Annual Security Reports.

Summary

Bridewell’s 2026 survey of 600 UK critical infrastructure security professionals found 93% reported cyber attacks in the past year, highlighting disruption, response delays, asset visibility gaps and growing AI governance concerns.

Key points

Censuswide conducted the Bridewell-commissioned, 26-question online survey in December 2025 among 600 professionals responsible for cybersecurity across UK critical infrastructure sectors.
The report says 93% of organisations experienced cyber attacks in the preceding 12 months; 50% reported IT disruption or outages, 34% operational disruption and 31% data loss.
Phishing and business email compromise were the most prevalent attack types, averaging 11 reported attacks per organisation, followed by malware at eight.
Average reported response times were approximately 10 hours for data theft, nine for ransomware and eight for supply-chain compromises; fewer than half had incident communications plans.
Regulatory requirements were the leading security maturity motivator at 35%, up from 26% the previous year; the report notes that the survey question’s wording changed.
Managing AI cyber risk ranked among the top challenges for 39% of respondents, while 36% reported using agentic AI to automate incident response and 35% for threat hunting.
Only 29% reported centralised, dynamically managed asset inventories. Although 63% felt highly or extremely prepared for post-quantum cryptography, 38% had yet to review government guidance.

Article Details

Publisher: Bridewell
Report Period: 2026 report; survey conducted in December 2025, with attack questions covering the preceding 12 months.
Scope: Cyber security threats, resilience, compliance, AI adoption, post-quantum readiness, asset visibility and workforce capabilities across UK critical national infrastructure.
Sample Size: 600 professionals responsible for cyber security in UK critical national infrastructure organisations; 26-question survey completed through online panels, conducted by Censuswide.
Key Statistics: 93% of surveyed organisations reported experiencing at least one successful cyber incident in the preceding 12 months.
Reported consequences of attacks included IT disruption or outages at 50% of organisations, operational disruption at 34%, revenue loss at 31% and data loss at 31%.
35% cited regulatory requirements as a motivator for cyber security maturity, compared with 26% in the previous report; the question wording changed between years.
Only 29% reported centrally and dynamically managing assets through an enterprise asset management system; 9% reported limited visibility or control over connected devices.
63% described themselves as highly or extremely prepared for post-quantum cryptography, while 38% had not reviewed government guidance.
Recommendations: Exercise incident response under realistic conditions, clarify decision-making authority and integrate technical response with executive leadership and communications.
Maintain complete, current asset visibility across IT and OT, identify mission-critical systems and use that information to prioritise protection and vulnerabilities.
Apply clear guardrails, human oversight, access governance and accountability to agentic AI; retain human oversight for safety-critical OT decisions.
Map cryptographic dependencies, assess how readily they can be upgraded and determine how long protected data must remain secure before claiming post-quantum readiness.
Invest in staff skills, monitoring and detection, effective patching and security-by-design throughout the technology lifecycle.