94% of UK CEOs state 91% of top concerns to be cyber threats.

Is cyber crime the worst threat to businesses today? The vast majority of business leaders agree that cyber crime is a top threat to any organisation as it can have devastating results in the form of disturbance of operations, loss of credibility and reputational damage and post-attack disruptions to the normal course of business.

Following the Covid-19 curveball, the vast majority of businesses shifted to remote work with thousands of employees working from home for months on months. In addition, on the positive side one cannot not notice that the pandemic expedited digital transformation. These two factors are seen as main contributors to a sharp increase in cyber attacks.

During January and February this year PwC carried out a global CEO survey, amongst 5050 CEOs, and the following were the salient take-aways:-

• Cyber threats ranked as the second top concern which troubles CEOs after the obvious ‘pandemics and health crisis’ (which scored first).
• 75% of UK CEOs said they explicitly factored into their organisation’s strategic risk management activities – ‘cyber threats’.
• 77% of UK CEOs admitted that they plan to increase their investment in digital transformation in 2021. With a staggering two thirds of overall respondents planning to increase investment in both cyber security and data privacy.

Cyber Threats are a top concern for CEOs predominantly coming from the following sectors: asset and wealth management, insurance, private equity, banking and capital markets and technology.

Protecting your business from cyber attacks, data breaches and email phishing attacks is key to have robust defenses in place to counter possible malicious hacking events. Risks definitely increased with the digital first approach adopted by many businesses. The use of collaboration software, VPNs and video calling tools sped up the shift onto work-from-home but brought along new cyber security risks.

Learn how you can mitigate these risks – speak to us today!