Cyber security is becoming a matter of good corporate governance, good ethics, and quite simply – good business.

Jean-Christophe Gaillard Jean-Christophe Gaillard
August 3, 2019 Big Data, Cloud & DevOps

Key factors for boards and executive management to consider in 2019 around cyber security and privacy

Cyber security has risen as a key issue on the radar of virtually all organisations. As a recent AT Kearney report suggests, cyber-attacks have been topping executives’ lists of business risks for three straight years. In fact, the overwhelming majority of organisations have experienced some form of cyber-attack at some point over the past few years.

This concern is also driven by security and privacy becoming increasingly valued by customers and the media, and by regulators who are now stepping into the topic with the ability to impose business-threatening fines (GDPR in Europe, California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018). In parallel, the cyber risk landscape is ever-complexifying – with new technologies such as AI bringing at least as many new threats as they bring opportunities to improve cyber security.

In this new age of “when-not-if” around cyber-attacks, it is worrying to see so many large organisations still struggling with the delivery of cyber security initiatives. Maturity levels on the topic have remained dangerously low, and in fact, the same AT Kearney study found that more than 60% of surveyed firms had not yet fully developed and implemented cyber defence strategy. Their findings echo those of many firms and research bodies year after year and the situation appears rooted in decades of short-sighted adverse prioritization of cyber security issues. It has also engineered a talent alienation dynamics which only reinforces the problem.

The Board is ultimately accountable for cyber resilience and the only way out of this dire situation can only come from the board down. To that end, it is crucial that cyber security stops appearing periodically at the board-level only as a check-box exercise or after an incident, – but instead starts anchoring itself at that level and informing every other strategic decision.

A way to achieve this could be to frame cyber security as a formal and integral part of a company’s Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) strategy, and this is the proposition the Security Transformation Research Foundation analyses in its latest White Paper.

Cyber security is crucial in helping organisations create and protect value – an aspect increasingly backed up by data models. Beyond this straightforward argument, however, security is also becoming a key social and governance topic for all organizations.

Cyber security has obvious and deep links to issues of privacy and the protection of personal data, and as such is necessarily becoming a key enabler to any organisation’s social responsibility initiative. This is especially important as digital trust is likely to become an organisation’s most valuable asset – irrespective of the direction in which data-driven business models evolve in the years to come.

Those new security and privacy imperatives also require a significant rethinking of corporate governance frameworks. As organisations cannot do whatever they want with the data they collect anymore, cyber security and data privacy considerations must start to infuse daily business operations and decisions. Crucially, the challenge of executing such transformation is itself a key governance issue, as cyber security is first and foremost a human and cultural problem (despite what tech vendors would like us to believe).

As every enterprise is becoming more and more data-driven, it is key for the Board to realize that cyber security is becoming a central tenet both of its core business and of its social impact and governance strategies. This should the basis on which the cyber security imperative is cemented at Board level. Right where it always belonged.

Read the full white paper here

  • Experfy Insights

    Top articles, research, podcasts, webinars and more delivered to you monthly.

  • Jean-Christophe Gaillard

    Tags
    Big Data & Technology
    Leave a Comment
    Next Post
    Is SQL needed to be a data scientist?

    Is SQL needed to be a data scientist?

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    More in Big Data, Cloud & DevOps
    Big Data, Cloud & DevOps
    Cognitive Load Of Being On Call: 6 Tips To Address It

    If you’ve ever been on call, you’ve probably experienced the pain of being woken up at 4 a.m., unactionable alerts, alerts going to the wrong team, and other unfortunate events. But, there’s an aspect of being on call that is less talked about, but even more ubiquitous – the cognitive load. “Cognitive load” has perhaps

    5 MINUTES READ Continue Reading »
    Big Data, Cloud & DevOps
    How To Refine 360 Customer View With Next Generation Data Matching

    Knowing your customer in the digital age Want to know more about your customers? About their demographics, personal choices, and preferable buying journey? Who do you think is the best source for such insights? You’re right. The customer. But, in a fast-paced world, it is almost impossible to extract all relevant information about a customer

    4 MINUTES READ Continue Reading »
    Big Data, Cloud & DevOps
    3 Ways Businesses Can Use Cloud Computing To The Fullest

    Cloud computing is the anytime, anywhere delivery of IT services like compute, storage, networking, and application software over the internet to end-users. The underlying physical resources, as well as processes, are masked to the end-user, who accesses only the files and apps they want. Companies (usually) pay for only the cloud computing services they use,

    7 MINUTES READ Continue Reading »

    About Us

    Incubated in Harvard Innovation Lab, Experfy specializes in pipelining and deploying the world's best AI and engineering talent at breakneck speed, with exceptional focus on quality and compliance. Enterprises and governments also leverage our award-winning SaaS platform to build their own customized future of work solutions such as talent clouds.

    Join Us At

    Contact Us

    1700 West Park Drive, Suite 190
    Westborough, MA 01581

    Email: support@experfy.com

    Toll Free: (844) EXPERFY or
    (844) 397-3739

    © 2023, Experfy Inc. All rights reserved.