PwC is out with its 18th annual CEO survey and to no one’s surprise cybersecurity is a prominent concern globally. More than ever, 2014 demonstrated the ubiquity of digital security attacks with virtually no industry emerging unscathed. According to PwC, reported incidents soared to almost 43 million in 2013, prompting 48 percent of CEOs to cite cybersecurity as a concern last year. This year that jumped to 61 percent among all potential threats cited by CEOs placing cybersecurity front and center on their furrowed brows.
To fend off the challenge, CEOs ranked cybersecurity technologies among the top three strategically important digital technologies for their industries. The report suggests a prominent view that demonstrating secure digital technologies can create value in customer trust.
Customer trust is also at the heart of a corporation’s reputation in managing responses to cyber breaches. Reputation management starts at the top and an enterprise will be judged by how secure its customers feel about the company’s ability to protect their personal data as well as its own proprietary information.
Clearly, the potential costs of managing and mitigating threats don’t stop at the ledger. Potential reputational risk, loss of market share and customer and shareholder estrangement are among casualties that may arise from cybersecurity incidents. PwC’s report is further acknowledgement that executives and their boards would do well to understand the full spectrum of ways their company is vulnerable to risks, as well as the changing policy and legal landscape around reporting, best practices and liability.
2014 offered further proof that a data breach CAN happen anywhere, to any firm.
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SDI #CyberTuesday offers insights and commentary on cyber risk management by SDI’s trusted cybersecurity, privacy and data security experts, skilled practitioners whose decades of experience working for governments and corporations around the world distinguish them as strategists and crisis managers.
You can view previous blog posts on cyber risk management here.
February 3, 2015