Elizabeth Leigh
A new McKinsey & Co. study has highlighted the potential economic risks posed by a growing number of cyberattacks amid companies with cybersecurity capabilities that are still in the emergent stage.
Poll authors Tucker Bailey, Andrea Del Miglio and Wolf Richter, who conducted the study in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, found that a majority of firms’ abilities to manage cyber risks are still developing and that there is high concern from technology executives over the changing nature and frequency of cyber attacks.
Nearly 50 percent of respondents are already considering relooking their research strategies as one stopgap, McKinsey said in an article announcing the publication of the study.
Such a threat landscape has begun to affect new technology acceptance rates, McKinsey says, as around 70 percent of those polled ascribeg cloud adoption delays to security concerns and another 40 percent cite the same reason for setbacks in enterprise mobility capabilities.
“If the pace and intensity of attacks increase and are not met with improved defenses, a backlash against digitization could occur, with large negative economic implications,†the authors said.
The report illustrated as an example cloud computing, with an estimated value of $4 trillion by 2020, where industries could stand to lose as much as $1.4 trillion due to cyber threat factors.
The research drew information from interviews with over 200 technology leaders, regulators, vendors and law enforcement officials in seven sectors and six regions, with supplementary data from the McKinsey Global Institute and a McKinsey executive survey on cyber risk.
