Deloitte Global has officially published the fourth edition of its Global Future of Cyber Survey report, which found that cybersecurity is increasingly becoming a cornerstone of many organizations’ growth strategies and business plans against what is gauged as an advanced and complex threat landscape.
As a part of this effort, Deloitte would identify organizations based on their level of cyber-maturity. Going by the available details, key indicators of a high-performing and cyber-mature organization included increased efforts towards cyber planning, implementation of key cybersecurity activities, cyber engagement at the board level, and deployment of AI within their cyber programs.
Anyway, talk about the results; they saw 25% of respondents from cyber-mature businesses reporting 11% or more cybersecurity incidents in the past year, along with a 7% increase of incidents since the 2023 survey.
Furthermore, an estimated one-third of respondents experienced a significant increase in CISO involvement during strategic conversations about tech-related capabilities in the past year. In a similar regard, the report discovered that 20% of companies have their CISOs now report directly to their CEO.
Moving on, Deloitte’s survey even revealed cyber’s growing importance in the context of securing an organization’s investment in tech capabilities, particularly priority areas like cloud (48%), Generative AI (41%), and data analytics (41%). On top of that, 39% of respondents were found to be using AI capabilities in their cybersecurity programs to a large extent.
“The rise of AI and other evolving technologies has significantly transformed the threat landscape. As threats become more sophisticated and impactful to core business, CISOs are increasingly required to adopt a more strategic role driving cross business risk prioritization and mitigation,” said Emily Mossburg, Deloitte Global Cyber Leader. “The close relationship between CISOs and CEOs is a testament to the role security plays in a business’s long-term success. Today, CISOs are not only protectors against outside threats, but key players helping their organization find success by integrating cyber considerations in the strategic decision-making process.”
The whole exercise further informed us on the top three expected outcomes from cybersecurity initiatives. These initiatives were protecting intellectual property (46%), improving threat detection and response (44%), and increasing efficiency and agility (44%). Next up, it found nearly that 83% of respondents agree or completely agree on measures like qualitative risk assessments and benchmarking being an integral part of their overall cybersecurity strategy.
Beyond that, 58% of respondents also displayed an intention to begin integrating cybersecurity spending with budgets for other programs, such as digital transformation initiatives, IT programs, and cloud investments.
“This year’s report highlights how the connection between cybersecurity and business outcomes continues to grow stronger, enabling cyber to have greater impacts in achieving organizational objectives” said Mossburg. “The increased reliance organizations have on their technology-driven programs is evolving the CISO roles and their cyber initiatives into essential components in driving business growth in a tech-powered future.”
Among other things, we ought to mention how Deloitte Global based its report on a survey of nearly 1,200 cyber decision-makers at the director level or higher (C-suite executives and C-suite direct reports), hailing from across 43 countries and 6 industries limited to organizations with at least 1,000 employees and $500 million in annual revenue.
Making this development even more important is Deloitte’s own stature, which stems from providing industry-leading audit and assurance, tax and legal, consulting, financial advisory, and risk advisory services to nearly 90% of the Fortune Global 500® and thousands of private companies.
