Commercial organisations could incur $5.2trn in additional costs and lost revenue by 2024 due to cyber attacks, as dependency on complex digitally-enabled business models outpaces the ability to introduce adequate safeguards that protect critical assets.
According to a report from Accenture, cyber crime will pose even more significant challenges that can threaten business operations, innovation and growth, and the expansion into new products and services, ultimately costing companies trillions of dollars. The high-tech industry faces the highest risk, the report warns, with more than $753bn potentially at risk, followed by the life sciences and automotive industries, with $642bn and $505bn at risk, respectively.
Securing the Digital Economy: Reinventing the Internet for Trust surveyed more than 1,700 CEOs and other c-suite executives around the world. Some 79% of respondents believe that the advancement of the digital economy will be ‘severely hindered’ unless there is ‘dramatic improvement’ to cyber security; 59% of those polled said that the Internet is ‘getting increasingly unstable’ from a cyber security standpoint – and they are ‘unsure how to react.’
“Strengthening internet security requires decisive – and, at times, unconventional – leadership by CEOs,” says Omar Abbosh, Group Chief Executive at Accenture’s Communications, Media & Technology operating group. “To become a cyber-resilient enterprise, companies need to start by bringing CISOs’ expertise to the board, to ensure that IT security is built-in from the initial design stage – and that business managers are [also] held responsible for security and data privacy.”
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