Survey finds cyber risk prioritization but lower confidence in resilience

PARCA eNews – Sept. 19, 2019 – While companies have prioritized cybersecurity to a greater degree over the past two years, confidence in their ability to to manage cyber risk has declined, according to a report by Marsh and Microsoft.

The 2019 Global Cyber Risk Perception Survey released Sept. 18, 2019, is based on a biennial survey of business leaders from a range of countries and industries including healthcare, to assess the cyber risk perceptions and risk management have shifted over time.

Some key findings included:

• In general organizations are focusing more on technology and prevention than prioritizing the time, resources, and activities needed to build cyber resilience.
• Despite the technology and innovation, organizations have a considerable amount of uncertainty about the degree of cyber risk such new technologies bring.
• There is ambivalence about the value of both government regulation and industry standards around cybersecurity, and see them as having limited effectiveness.

The report concluded that there are encouraging signs of improvement in organizations’ views and management of cyber risk, but that their cyber confidence declined.

"Cyber risk is now clearly and firmly at the top of corporate risk agendas, and we see a positive shift towards the adoption of more rigorous, comprehensive cyber risk management in many areas," the researchers wrote.

"However, many organizations still struggle with how best to articulate, approach, and act upon cyber risk within their overall enterprise risk framework — even as the tide of technological change brings new and unanticipated cyber risk concerns. "

Source: Marsh Microsoft 2019 Global Cyber Risk Perception Survey