Cyber crime poses big threat to top businesses, report

Cybercrime is one of the biggest threat for top organizations face these days. Every day we hear news stories regarding data breaches or theft of personal data from big companies, and according to an estimate, the cost of cybercrime will reach $6 trillion by 2021.

To find out the reasons to why big organizations face the massive risk of cybercrime, ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) from Pakistan teamed up with Chartered Accountants from Australia, New Zealand, Macquarie University and Optus to launch a report on Cyber.

The report launched by the association features views from 1500 ACCA and CA ANZ members, which also include opinions from their members in Pakistan. The report observes that big organizations do not manage cybersecurity as a big risk to their firm, instead they leave this problem for the IT specialists to handle.

The head of ACCA Pakistan said, “Finance professionals in Pakistan need to understand and play their full role in managing cyber risk in their organizations. Weakness in cyber security is a significant business risk across all organisations. The ACCA Qualification ensures that our students and members in the country are developed and assessed in digital and technology competency to be in a position to lead organization into the digital future”.

The cyber report also highlights the changing nature of cyber threats and advises the finance community to monitor the evolving nature of the cyber threat in companies and should take necessary steps to manage it properly.

Following are some of the key points mentioned in the ACCA cyber report;

• Almost 60% of CFOs and finance leaders rank cybersecurity as the most important or top five business risk
• However, a third of respondents did not know whether their organizations had been the subject of a cyber attack. Few survey responses showed a recovery plan that included much beyond the hardware.
• Over 20% of finance professionals admitted they had no involvement whatsoever in cybersecurity within their company.
• 10% of respondents did not know who in the business was responsible day-to-day for cybersecurity.
• Big organizations placed a higher priority on cyber risks (8%), but small companies were marginally (5 percent) less concerned or aware of such security risks.