Almost Half of Boards Lack Real Understanding of Cyber Threat
A new survey found that 45 percent of cybersecurity professionals believe their board of directors have a major gap in their understanding of cyber risk, or simply don't understand the risk at all.
This is despite more than half of boards being ultimately accountable for the cyber strategy, according to the second annual Harvey Nash / PGI Cyber Security Survey, representing the views of almost 200 senior cybersecurity professionals.
The survey also reveals that lack of cyber risk awareness affects the senior executive team: one third of cyber professionals (33%) believe their CEO has major knowledge gaps and almost half (49%) believe so for their CFO. CMOs, many of whom have increasing responsibility for customer data and driving customer facing digital strategies, were also rated poorly in the survey, with 43% of cyber professionals believing they had major knowledge gaps, and one in ten (11%) believing they had no cyber risk awareness at all.