Cyber is ‘biggest concern’ of business decision-makers

Cyber topped the list of concerns for business decision-makers for the third year in a row, according to the Travelers Risk Index, with more than half saying an attack is unavoidable.

Cyber threats were chosen as a top concern by 59% of the 1200 survey respondents. 

The top three cyber concerns were suffering a security breach (57% say they worry some or a great deal), a system glitch causing a company’s computers to go down (55%) and becoming a cyber extortion/ransomware victim (54%).

Some 57% of respondents think a future cyber attack on their company is inevitable.

The findings of the survey will make for reassuring reading for cyber insurers concerned that the recent wave of rate rises will drive customers away. Indeed, some 75% of respondents said they believe that having a cyber insurance policy is critical (even though only 59% said their company has purchased coverage).

The survey also revealed that many participants feel their organizations are better protected against cyber threats than they really are. 

More than nine out of 10 respondents were confident their company had implemented best practices to prevent or mitigate a cyber event. However, 64% said they don’t use endpoint detection and response, 59% haven’t conducted a cyber assessment for vendors, and 53% don’t have an incident response plan. 

“Cyber attacks can shut down a company for a long period of time or even put it out of business, and it’s imperative that companies have a plan in place to mitigate any associated operational and financial disruptions,” said Tim Francis, enterprise cyber lead at Travelers, in a statement. “Effective measures that have proven to reduce the risk of becoming a cyber victim are available, but based on these survey results, not enough companies are taking action.”

And while 90% of survey respondents were familiar with multifactor authentication, only about half said their company had implemented the practice for remote access.

Slightly more than a quarter (26%) of survey participants said their company had suffered a data breach or cyber event, with 49% reporting that the event occurred within the past 12 months. 

Apart from cyber threats, respondents were concerned by broad economic uncertainty (cited by 57% of respondents), fluctuations in oil and energy costs (56%), the ability to attract and retain talent (56%), and medical cost inflation (55%).

This year also saw big jumps in concerns about oil and energy costs (a 16-point increase, up from 40%) and supply chain risks (54%, up from 43%).