Cybersecurity is no longer just about protecting your company’s assets.
It’s also necessary for supporting strategic goals and achieving better business outcomes, said PwC that recently released the results of a survey that received responses from more than 3,000 executives and IT professionals worldwide.
The company's May 2019 Digital Trust Insights Survey found that the top 25% of all respondents lead the way on cybersecurity and at the same time deliver more value and better business outcomes.
These trailblazers, the way PwC call these top companies, are also significantly more optimistic about the potential growth in revenue and profit margin.
According to PwC, 57% expect revenue to grow by 5% or more while 53% expect profit margin to expand by at least 5%.
One-third of trailblazers are from Asia Pacific
Many are large companies; 38% of respondents from companies worth at least US$1 billion are trailblazers, said PwC. The financial services (FS) industry and the technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector are particularly well represented in the leader group.
In addition, 33% of FS respondents and 30% of TMT respondents are trailblazers, compared to roughly a quarter of the survey base in other industries.
Geographically, just 21% of EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) respondents are trailblazers, compared to 30% in the Americas, and 30% in Asia Pacific.
What set trailblazers apart
The leading behaviours that set trailblazers apart from their corporate peers include aligning their business and cybersecurity strategies, taking a risk-based approach, and coordinating their teams that manage risk.
Key findings from PwC’s Digital Trust Insights survey illustrate the edge that trailblazers maintain in all three areas:
Connected on strategy: 65% of trailblazers strongly agree their cybersecurity team is embedded in the business, conversant in the organisation’s business strategy and has a cybersecurity strategy that supports business imperatives (vs. 15% of others)
Connected on a risk-based approach: 89% of trailblazers say their cybersecurity teams are consistently involved in managing the risks inherent in the organisation’s business transformation or digital initiatives (vs. 41% of others)
Coordinated in execution: 77% percent of trailblazers strongly agree their cybersecurity team has sufficient interaction with senior leaders to develop an understanding of the company’s risk appetite around core business practices (vs. 22% of others)
“By focusing on building digital trust, trailblazers are driving more proactive, pre-emptive and responsive actions to embed these strategies into the business, as opposed to their peers who primarily look to minimise the operational impacts of cyber threats in reactive manner,” said TR Kane, PwC US Strategy, Transformation & Risk Leader.
More than eight in 10 trailblazers say they have anticipated a new cyber risk to digital initiatives and managed it before it affected their partners or customers (compared to six in 10 of others).
