UK CEOs Believe Cyber-Attacks Are Inevitable

16th July 2018

The new survey by KPMG discovered that 40% of UK business leaders believed that they would become the target of cyber-criminals.

4 in 10 CEO’s now have the mind-set that a cyber-attack is now inevitable, this is a shift that has only grown in the last few years.

150 CEO’s in the UK and 1,150 from around the world surveyed by KPMG regard their investment plans for the future and the most complex issues facing the organisations they run.

Out of the UK CEO’s in the survey 39% held the strong belief that they would experience a cyber-attack, outside of the UK this statistic was almost 50%.

The vice chair at KPMG, Bernard Brown, said that the results from the survey reinforce how important cybersecurity has become to businesses.

“The seeming inevitability of a cyber-attack crosses all borders and has now crossed firmly over the threshold for the board-level discussions,” he said.

“Protecting the business from a cyber-attack has jumped further up the boardroom agenda and we are seeing businesses making their defences the best they can be.”

Out of the UK CEO’s included in the survey 74% agreed that a cyber-security strategy is extremely important to gaining the support and trust of stakeholders this drops to 55% when we look at the opinion of global CEO’s.

The report has highlighted the cyber awareness of the CEO’s within UK companies and with 39% of respondents stating they believe there organisation is “very well” or “well” prepared for a future cyber-attack the shift is obvious.

Cybersecurity specialists and data scientists are both seen as an effective part of the business by 45% and 62% of UK CEO’s respectively.

“It’s encouraging to see that CEOs are developing a more mature understanding of what cyber security actually means. They are beginning to ask more awkward and searching questions of their IT teams. What are the challenges that face us specifically, what risks are we carrying, what do we need to be resilient to a cyber-attack?” Brown added.

“Organisations are spending more time planning for worst case scenarios, running simulations and thinking in detail about how they would deal with the uncertainties that arise during a cyber-breach.”