Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity leader, today announced new research revealing that 90% of IT decision makers claim their business would be willing to compromise on cybersecurity in favor of digital transformation, productivity, or other goals. Additionally, 82% have felt pressured to downplay the severity of cyber risks to their board.
The research reveals that just 50% of IT leaders and 38% of business decision makers believe the C-suite completely understand cyber risks. Although some think this is because the topic is complex and constantly changing, many believe the C-suite either doesn’t try hard enough (26%) or doesn’t want (20%) to understand.
There’s also disagreement between IT and business leaders over who’s ultimately responsible for managing and mitigating risk. IT leaders are nearly twice as likely as business leaders to point to IT teams and the CISO. 49% of respondents claim that cyber risks are still being treated as an IT problem rather than a business risk.
This friction is causing potentially serious issues: 52% of respondents agree that their organization’s attitude to cyber risk is inconsistent and varies from month to month.
However, 31% of respondents believe cybersecurity is the biggest business risk today, and 66% claiming it has the highest cost impact of any business risk – a seemingly conflicting opinion given the overall willingness to compromise on security.
According to the cybersecurity company, there are three main ways respondents believe the C-suite will sit up and take notice of cyber risk:
- 62% think it would take a breach of their organization
- 62% it would help if they could better report on and more easily explain the business risk of cyber threats
- 61% say it would make an impact if customers start demanding more sophisticated security credentials
For the research, Trend Micro commissioned Sapio Research to interview 5321 IT and business decision makers from enterprises larger than 250 employees across 26 countries.
To read a full copy of the report, please visit: this link
