Tenable, a cyber exposure company, has revealed that the vast majority of Saudi Arabian organisations (95 per cent) have experienced a business-impacting cyber attack in the past 12 months, according to both business and security executives
The data is drawn from ‘The Rise of the Business-Aligned Security Executive’, a commissioned study of more than 800 global business and cybersecurity leaders, including 49 respondents in Saudi Arabia, conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Tenable.
As cybercriminals continue their relentless attacks, over the past two years, 85 per cent of respondents in Saudi Arabia have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of business-impacting cyber attacks.
Unfortunately, these attacks have had damaging effects, with organisations reporting the customer and/or employee data loss (41 per cent), ransomware payments (37 per cent) and financial loss or theft (35 per cent). Around 61 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s security leaders said these attacks also involved operational technology (OT).
Business leaders want a clear picture of how at-risk they are and how that risk changes as business strategies are planned and executed. But only four out of 10 local security leaders say they can answer the basic question, “How secure are we, or at risk? “With a high level of confidence, despite the prevalence of cyber attacks that are impacting business.
Looking at global respondents, fewer than 50 per cent of security leaders said they frame cybersecurity threats within a specific business risk context. For example, while 96 per cent of respondents had developed response strategies to the COVID-19 pandemic, 75 per cent of business and security leaders admitted that their response strategies were aligned only “somewhat.”
“In the future, there will be two kinds of CISO, those who align themselves directly with the business and everyone else. The only way to thrive in this era of digital acceleration is to bring cyber into every business question, decision and investment,” said Renaud Deraison, chief technology officer and co-founder, Tenable. “We believe this study shows that forward-leaning organisations view cybersecurity strategy as essential to innovation and that when security and the business work hand-in-glove, the results can be transformational.”
