Jane Edwards
A survey by Deloitte has found that 86 percent of C-suite executives in the U.S. say that disruption caused by the pandemic resulted in an increase in cyberthreats within their organizations.
Deloitte surveyed 577 C-suite officials worldwide, including 159 executives from U.S.-based companies, for the 2021 Future of Cyber report and found that 14 percent of U.S. respondents said their organizations lack plans to defend against cyberthreats, the company said in a report published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.
When asked about the biggest fallout from cyber breaches in the past year, U.S. respondents cited operational disruption, share price drop, leadership change, loss of customer trust and intellectual property theft.
Unintended actions of well-meaning personnel; ransomware, phishing and malware; third-party and contractor risk or other supply chain deficiencies; and nation-state threats emerged as the top cyberthreat concerns of U.S. executives.
The survey also showed that 31 percent of U.S. executives said their organizations are facing difficulty when it comes to recruiting and retaining cyber talent.
“The cyber talent gap is a long-standing industry challenge,” said Deborah Golden, a principal with Deloitte & Touche and Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory’s cyber and strategic risk leader.
“As the threat landscape and adversarial set diversifies, they’re driving the need for cybersecurity professionals to break through silos and solve challenges by working across functions and, for instance, expanding the talent pipeline by recruiting team members from nontraditional disciplines such as talent management, marketing data retention, and supply chain operations,” added Golden.
