New report says 95% of Saudi businesses experienced a major cyber attack in the past year

A staggering 95 per cent of Saudi businesses have experienced a business-impacting cyber attack or compromise within the past 12 months, new research by cybersecurity firm Tenable reveals.

Globally, 94 per cent of businesses said they have experienced a business-impacting compromise in the past year.

According to The Rise of the Business-Aligned Security Executive study, 61 per cent of Saudi organisations reported that these cyberattacks involved operational technology systems.

Business leaders want a clear picture of how at-risk they are and how that risk is changing as they plan and execute business strategies. But only 43 per cent of Saudi security leaders say they can answer the fundamental question, “How secure, or at risk, are we?” with a high level of confidence, despite the prevalence of business-impacting cyber attacks, the report shows.

Further, fewer than 50 per cent of global security leaders said they are framing cyber security threats within the context of a specific business risk. For example, though 96 per cent of respondents had developed response strategies to the Covid-19 pandemic, 75 per cent of business and security leaders admitted their response strategies were only “somewhat” aligned.

Organisations with security and business leaders who are aligned in measuring and managing cybersecurity as a strategic business risk deliver demonstrable results. Compared to their silo-ed peers, business-aligned security leaders are 90 per cent are very or completely confident in their ability to demonstrate that cyber security investments are positively impacting business performance compared with 55 per cent of their silo-ed counterparts.

“In the future, there will be two kinds of CISOs — 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 cyber security strategy as essential to innovation and that when security and the business work hand-in-glove, the results can be transformational,” he added.

Read: DDoS attacks triple year-on-year in Q2 2020: Kaspersky