A new survey by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and Attivo Networks looks at how deception technology can improve the cyber defenses of organizations. It found that the majority of firms (55%) are using this technology. Around half of these firms rely on commercial solutions, 30% have developed their own solutions or are using open source offerings, while 18% use honeypots or honey nets.

The study shows that if implemented well, deception technology can dramatically reduce the time that attackers can reside in an organization’s infrastructure without getting detected. The average attacker dwell time for companies that don’t use deception solutions was 60.9 days, which is almost twice is long as for firms that do use this technology (31.9 days). In addition, organizations with expert understanding of deception techniques reported dwell times averaging only 5.5 days.

Read more: Network Deception Techniques Cut Dwell Times, Says Report