By the end of 2021, global ransomware impact had risen to $20 billion – 57 times what it was in just 2015. But by 2031 – less than a decade away – global ransomware will explode to an annual cost of around $265 billion. These numbers are only expected to rise – and that’s not including all of the other costs related to cybercrime.
And yet, business executives and corporate boards remain insufficiently engaged on cybersecurity-related issues. That’s a problem for three reasons:
- Reason #1: You need budget. Many cybersecurity teams are still underfunded. Others are funded reasonably, but their budgets may not be optimally used. This can make it difficult to enhance their security posture with solutions like extended detection and response (XDR), adversarial testing, increased headcount, or retaining existing staff.
To allocate available resources to effectively bolster cybersecurity posture, your company’s decision-makers must fully grasp what’s at stake. - Reason #2: You need support. Cybersecurity success isn’t just about a SecOps team responding to alerts and improving their threat-hunting capabilities. For your company to stay safe, a lot of other things must happen as well: IT infrastructure managers have to rigorously adhere to best practices, software developers need to build more trustworthy code, better digital hygiene has to be taught and enforced across all your user communities, and procurement has to make sure your supply-chain partners don’t inadvertently expose you to excessive risk.
Those things will only happen if the highest levels of your company champion cybersecurity with a clear view of the issues at hand. - Reason #3: There’s a lot at stake. If something bad happens to your company, it could mean drastic consequences. It could cost you a lot of money. It could cost you a lot of customers. It could permanently damage your brand. There could be regulatory consequences. Some companies never even recover from a serious breach.
So, SecOps teams or a CISO shouldn’t shoulder the potential consequences of a breach alone. The buck ultimately stops at your top executives’ desks when it comes to the potential adverse business impact of a breach.
At Secureworks®, we understand this critical dynamic between you and your company’s executive leadership. That’s why, among other things, we have a free resource you can use in your efforts to better engage with executive management: the Boardroom Cybersecurity 2022 Report.
This report, produced by Cybersecurity Ventures, is chock-full of facts and figures that put cybersecurity in its proper business context for your executive leadership. It includes insights into:
- The financial impact of cybercrime
- The relationship between cybersecurity and executive leadership
- Ransomware insights
- Cybersecurity spending
- Cyberinsurance
- The cybersecurity workforce
The report also suggests action steps for executives to invest more and better safeguard their organizations against escalating threats.
I encourage you to download the report here and share it with at least one executive on your company’s leadership team. It may prove a useful tool to start a productive conversation. Cybersecurity is too critical to your company’s future to be left to your SecOps team alone.
Sponsoring this report is yet another way Secureworks helps you address your entire cybersecurity challenge. Our superior global threat intel, industry-leading open XDR solutions and unmatched portfolio of services are only part of the story. We all need to work together to make cybersecurity an integral aspect of the digital economy – rather than just an after-the-fact tax that each organization must pay on their digital transformations because the adversaries are relentless.
We’re committed to the mission of securing human progress. And we believe you are, too.
