As digitalisation continues to drive changes in businesses and economies, and the world becomes more and more digitally connected, cyber demands continue to increase as it becomes the centre of digital transformation in the fourth industrial revolution.
Although organisations across all sectors of the economy are investing more in digital transformation and significantly increasing technology spend year-on-year, research has shown that the current lack of cyber talent, adequate budget and operational alignment is creating a dissonance between what organisations aspire to, versus the current reality of their cyber posture.
According to Deloitte’s 2019 Future of Cyber survey, there are notable gaps in organisations’ abilities to meet cybersecurity demands for the future. Findings indicate that many cyber organisations are challenged by their ability to prioritise cyber risk across the enterprise (16 percent), followed closely behind by lack of management alignment on priorities and adequate funding, each at 15 percent.
“Cyber leaders today are focused on digital transformation as a catalyst for change for both the greater enterprise and their cyber agendas. The good news is the survey results show that organisations are no longer taking a wait-and-see philosophy to preparing for and responding to cyber incidents”, says Eric Mc Gee, risk advisory cyber leader, Deloitte Africa.
“There is a whole new way of thinking that is starting to occur with how organisations are going to achieve their business outcomes, and that is with a cyber everywhere mindset,” he says.
Findings from the 500 C-suite cybersecurity executives surveyed also suggested that there is still much work to do in aligning cyber initiatives to executive management’s digital transformation priorities. There is a real gap that must be bridged, with finite budgets and resources as well as a lack of prioritisation by executive management. The overall consensus was that many organisations aren’t fully equipped to efficiently and effectively tackle today’s cyber demands.
The survey finds that while organisations are prioritising digital transformation, only 14 percent of cyber budgets are allocated to provide for cybersecurity in transformation efforts and less than 20 percent of organisations have security liaisons embedded within business units to foster greater collaboration, innovation, and security.
Also, although half of organisations (49 percent) have cybersecurity on their board agenda at least quarterly, half of boards are not discussing cyber as often as they should. More concerning is that only four percent of respondents say cybersecurity is on the agenda once a month.
“The aim of this survey report is to put the numbers into context and to expand the dialogue and acceptance of cyber everywhere so that organisations are not limited by it but empowered to embrace the opportunities it will create,” Mc Gee says.
As organisations embrace digital transformation and shift to the cloud increasing the complexity of technology infrastructure and outsourcing workloads to third parties, they are also expanding their cyber risk. Cyber will become more prolific across systems, platforms, and people — employees, customers, and partners. Deloitte notes that enterprise leadership will have to correlate all of that to stay ahead of the adversary and protect the organisation’s most valuable assets.
Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson with wired report
