Professional services firm PwC surveyed over 1,600 CEOs from around the world and found that cyber attacks have become the most feared threat for large organisations – and that many have taken actions around their personal use of technology to help protect against hackers.
A total of 80 per cent of those surveyed listed cyber threats as the biggest threat to their business, making it the thing that most CEOs are worried about, ranking ahead of skills (79 per cent) and the speed of technological change. (75 per cent)
48 per cent CEOs surveyed said the risk of cyber attacks had caused them to alter their own personal digital behaviour, such as deleting social media accounts or virtual assistant applications or requesting a company to delete their data.
The fact that CEOs are becoming more aware of the danger of cyberattacks is encouraging. With the staggering costs that data breaches have incurred – lost money, lost reputation, lost jobs – cybersecurity is now a big enough issue to be elevated to the c-suite and the boardroom. It can no longer be ignored or relegated to second tier status or dropped into the laps of low level employees. Defining and implementing an effective cybersecurity program starts at the very top. The CEOs who recognise this will be rewarded by staying out of the data breach headlines.
Deleting your social media won’t stop a highly targeted attack on your business, but it does reduce the risk and takes away a possible attack vector. Social media can be a great tool used by anyone- but if you are a famous celebrity, politician, or CEO of a well-known company, you naturally become more highly targeted and create a sort of honey pot to online attackers.
They will try any way they can to enter a business, and social media is just another path on their list of entry points. Taking this out of the equation can be extremely helpful, especially if the person being targeted has used a password that they have used before, or if they have not set up two factor authentication.
Cyber attacks are a daily occurrence. So it is not surprising to see CEOs are growing increasingly worried about the threats not just to their organisations, but to themselves, as CEOs.
As awareness of threats continues to grow, it is encouraging to hear that CEOs are adapting their behaviour to take into consideration these threats and to decrease their attack surface. Technology can help protect against cyber attacks, but ultimately, it is down to individuals adopting more secure behaviours that will be the determining factor in whether there is a breach or not
We are encouraged to see CEO’s moving past the opinion that cyber incidents are “a cost of doing business on the internet” and beginning to accept that there is much more that can, and should, be done to protect themselves and their organizations. By “leading from the front” and taking personal responsibility for their own cybersecurity they are taking the first steps needed to create a comprehensive culture of security, moving from over-dependence on technology to true organizational awareness of the role of every individual in securing the organization