Execs don’t believe their companies learn the right lessons in cybersecurity

A majority of executives around the world feel their organizations can do better when it comes to learning from their past cyber mistakes, according to the results of a newly released global survey conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Willis Towers Watson.

Who takes the leading role in developing employee-related cyber risk policies?

The EIU surveyed over 450 companies across the globe about their strategies and the challenges they face in building cyber resilient organizations. While most organizations regard themselves as doing a good job on incident response, only thirteen percent said their organizations were above average in incorporating learnings from cyber incidents into resilience strategies.

The survey found little consensus among boards and executives on cyber resiliency planning, including the deployment of strategies across the organization, where to allocate funds, and what areas of the organization are most at risk. The split in cyber preparedness was also apparent across geographies, as North American companies contrast strongly with their peers in Asia and, to some extent, the EU on issues such as expectations for frequency and impact of cyber-attacks, and confidence in their ability to recover from a breach.

Interestingly, of the four regions surveyed (North America, UK, Europe and Asia), the UK had the highest rate of perceived cyber resiliency at 21%.

Some other key findings of the report include:

• The average corporate cyber resilience spend was about 1.7 percent of revenue, and 96 percent of board members believe that isn’t enough
• North America spent the highest on cyber-resilience as a percent of revenue (2-3%), whereas the other regions spent between 1-2% or less
• Among executives, there is little consensus on how to allocate cyber budgets – but very close responses were given between “technology to harden cyber-defenses” and “IT talent acquisition, skills training/development”
• 3 out of the 4 regions believe that the “board as a whole” should oversee cyber risk, while Europe disagreed saying it should be a dedicated cyber group.

Our cyber resilience head does a good job presenting

“It’s important for companies to understand that achieving cyber resiliency is a company- wide imperative, one that shouldn’t be sequestered to certain roles or functions,” says Anthony Dagostino, global head of cyber risk with Willis Towers Watson. “Boards should emphasize the need for a strategic framework, and the C-Suite should set the tone within their organizations by empowering stakeholders, such as IT, Risk, HR, legal and compliance to drive an integrated risk management and resiliency strategy. While technology will remain a crucial defense, more than half of cyber incidents are attributable to employee behavior and talent deficits in cybersecurity roles, so investing in other areas such as human capital solutions and cyber insurance have to become part of regular board and C-Suite conversations.”