Despite growing global concern about cyber risk, enterprises still tend to focus more on compliance than actually protecting their organisations.
So says Eric Mc Gee, associate director: Risk Advisory Southern Africa at Deloitte, who will speak at the upcoming ITWeb Security Summit on global cyber trends.
A Deloitte survey conducted with Wakefield Research late last year polled over 500 C-level executives who oversee cyber security at major enterprises, and found that while a lot of effort is put to compliance, not enough is done to protect organisations.
“There is a fundamental difference between compliance and protection,” says McGee. “Organisations are still being hit by attacks that are preventable. They need to take cyber risk more seriously, identify what risks face their own organisations and enable the transformation that is required to protect themselves.”
The Deloitte survey delivered deep insight into what customers are thinking about cyber security and how they are integrating it into their organisations, concluding that cyber requires more executive attention, budget, prioritisation, people, tools, processes, governance and overall collective thought, and requires a leader with the authority to drive change.
McGee notes that a changing environment in South Africa, with significant growth in cloud adoption and the enactment of the POPIA, makes cyber security increasingly important.
“The enactment of the POPIA suddenly puts a different lens on security – specifically data protection. Now, organisations have to worry about the very real consequences of a data breach, with the potential for fines or prison sentences, forced disclosure and the potential for civil claims,” he says.
“There has been a lot of talk and worry, and not enough action. It is critical to fix the foundations to enable digital transformation and remain resilient,” McGee says.
McGee will address the 15th annual ITWeb Security Summit, to be staged as a virtual event from 25 to 28 August. His talk, entitled ‘Cyber everywhere. Ready or not, it’s here – the future of cyber survey 2019’, will take place on day three of the event, unpacking the findings of the Deloitte survey of C-level executives who oversee cyber security at companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue.
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