While we are growing digitally, we still live in the era of immense technological insecurity. Cybersecurity threats across the world pose one of the largest threats to organizations in the modern era. The United States of America, the birthplace of Internet commerce, is currently in the grips of the cybersecurity confidence crisis. As such, cyber-threats are known to top the anxiety list for company heads and CEOs –at around 53 percent. It serves to be a tell-tale sign of how volatile and significant the problem has become currently.
For instance, major outbreaks in the cyber-security platform like Wannacry breach and Equifax breach have revealed the manner in which hackers are capable of creating multi-million dollar frauds for large-scale corporations. As per the latest study report by PWC, it was revealed that around 40 percent of the CEOs rated themselves to be highly concerned about the ongoing cyber-threats. As far as CEO anxiety is concerned, cyber-threats are now known to outlive other factors like social instability, increasing taxes, and technological changes.
Some Cybersecurity Events or Activities that CEOs Fear
There are several instances of evidence revealing that cyber risks tend to be of increasing concern to the CEOs with every passing time. Here are some of the most-feared cybersecurity incidents that keep CEOs worried all the time:
- Ransomware Attacks: Ransomware serves to be one of the most major business threats that modern CEOs face. It is known to cause a great deal of concern. It is believed that ransomware was capable of costing businesses in the United States over $7.5 billion in 2019. Moreover, recent study reports reveal that ransomware attacks have grown by as much as 72 percent this year due to the overall chaos because of the pandemic.
- Cloud Security Concerns: After the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, most businesses out there are looking forward to relying on the innovative cloud infrastructure for navigating the challenges related to remote working & allowing business continuity. As organizations around the world begin shifting to the cloud, they are faced with an all-new daunting challenge –security.
In recent times, it is estimated that attacks on the enterprise and public cloud increased by around 600 percent. This has made cloud security as one of the topmost concerns. While cloud servers should maintain the respective servers, organizations out there are responsible for individual data security.
- Phishing Attacks: These are one of the most common challenges associated with security faced by businesses across the world. As per the experts, around 90 percent of all cyberattacks are known to start with a phishing email. As a matter of fact, there has been observed around 6000 percent increase in phishing attacks since the advent of the pandemic.
- Social Media Scams: Scammers all around the world are leveraging the potential offered by the social media platforms to get access to sensitive data of users and organizations. As such, many CEOs have considered quitting social media altogether over major security concerns.
- CEO Frauds: BEC or Business Email Compromise also goes by the name as CEO frauds. It is another type of phishing attack costing businesses billions of dollars every year.
