Cyber risk rising across 71 sectors: Moody’s

Cyber risk is rising worldwide across 71 global rating sectors, according to new research by Moody’s.

The rating agency said that or $22trn (or 28%) of the more than $80trn in debt that it rates is considered high or very high with respect to its cyber risk exposure.

This is an increase of about $1trn compared with Moody’s 2019 heat map, which covered sectors with a combined $78trn in rated debt.

Critical infrastructure sectors including electric, gas and water utilities, and not-for-profit hospitals are considered to have a “very high” cyber risk exposure.

“High risk” sectors include banks, technology, telecommunications, chemicals and energy. 

Steven Libretti, Moody’s analyst and lead author of the report, said: “Cyber risk is rising. However, we are witnessing correlated growth in robust security program investments, as industries prioritize the need to assess and quantify the risk to inform key strategy decisions, mitigate supply chain risk, and ensure investor confidence.”

Moderate risk sectors include advanced and emerging economy sovereigns and regional & local governments, manufacturing and insurance.

Low risk sectors include structured finance, mining and public sector housing.

In its research, Moody’s used data and metrics provided by BitSight Technologies, a cyber ratings company in which it owns a minority stake, RMS, a catastrophe risk modeling company, and Bureau van Dijk, a data and information service company, both owned by Moody’s Analytics.