UK CEOs rate cyber risks as second most significant business threat

• Cyber threat concern ranks higher than new market entrants or speed of technological change
• 97% of UK CEOs currently addressing cyber breaches in their organisation
• PwC outlines seven cyber security governance principles for boards & investors

As world leaders gathered in Davos last week, cyber security again featured high on the agenda. PwC’s CEO Survey reveals that three-quarters (76%) of UK CEOs consider cyber risks to be a significant business threat. This is second only to the availability of key skills, and ahead of changing consumer behaviour, the speed of technological change and new market entrants.

The findings – based on a research sample of 1,379 global leaders, including 126 UK CEOs – show that UK leaders are significantly more concerned about cyber threats than many of their global peers (UK 76%; global 61%) who don’t consider it amongst the top three business threats.

Nearly all CEOs in the UK (97%) say their organisation is currently addressing cyber breaches affecting business information or critical systems, well above the global average figure of 90%.

Richard Horne, UK cyber security partner at PwC said:

“The majority of boards now recognise that cyber security is a complex risk that requires their attention. However, most struggle to move beyond building ‘standard’ cyber security control frameworks in the hope they are sufficient, to genuinely managing risk.

“The most successful leaders will be those who define a comprehensive board approach to governing cyber security. It’s key to recognise that requires changing their businesses and operations to make themselves more securable, as well as building security controls. In response to our engagements with boards across various sectors, we’ve created a set of principles for the governance of cyber security to help them improve their response to this existential business risk.”

Now is the time to take cyber security governance seriously

PwC has released seven principles for boards to adopt to assist both themselves and investors around the governance of cyber security:

1. Have a real understanding of exposure;
2. Have appropriate capability and resource dedicated to cyber security;
3. Adopt a holistic framework and approach, including meaningful measurement;
4. Submit to independent review and test;
5. Have sufficient incident preparedness and a track record of identifying, responding to, and learning from, incidents;
6. Have a considered approach to legal and regulatory environments for cyber security;
7. Make an active community contribution, sharing information with others in the industry.

Richard Horne concluded:

“These principles will help organisations to challenge themselves as to whether their response to cyber threats is adequate and continuing to evolve with threat developments.

“We’re also seeing investors becoming increasingly focussed on cyber security when making investment decisions. The principles are therefore designed to not only to aid board governance, but also frame the discussions around cyber security between boards and current or potential investors.”

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Notes for editors.

• Please click the following link to access the full report: Governing cyber security risk: It’s time to take it seriously - Seven principles for Boards and Investors
• To hear what UK CEOs from Majestic Wine PLC, Henderson Global Investors and Zenith have to say on cyber security please visit the CEO Survey website
• For an overview of other technology findings from this year’s CEO Survey in the UK please visit: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2017/uk/key-findings/technology.html

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