KPMG has urged company and audit committee chairmen of the FTSE 350 to prioritise cyber security in the Boardroom following the publication of the Government’s ‘Cyber Governance Health Check’ report.
The call for cyber action comes in the wake of research showing that only 20% of large organisations detected that outsiders had successfully penetrated their network in the past 12 months and that just 21% of audit committees are satisfied with the information they receive about cyber security risks.
Malcolm Marshall, head of information protection and business resilience at KPMG, commented: "Barely a week seems to go by without news of another high profile cyber attack hitting the headlines, making this report all the more timely. It shows the true scale of the threat facing UK plc and reveals just how prepared we are today. The hope must be that it will be used by organisations to track their progress over time."
The Government’s ‘Cyber Healthcheck’ has succeeded in moving cyber security up the Boardroom agenda, leading one FTSE 350 chairman to tell KPMG that it "has raised the significance of cyber security which the Board is considering and will action".
Marshall added: "We found a wide range of Board level views, with some senior executives seeing cyber security as boring, some see it as sexy, others seeing it as over-hyped and still more as a necessary evil. The one consistency is that they are struggling to find the right balance between managing risk and making investments in a world where the threats constantly change."
