Business votes digital risks as top three disruption threats

Digital risks rank as the top three interruption threats in a recent survey of global businesses, undertaken by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI).

Cyber attacks emerged as the greatest perceived threat, with 88% of businesses concerned. This was followed by data breach in second place and IT/telecom outages in third.

The results are from the BCI’s Horizon Scan Report, published in association with the Business Standards Institution (BSI).

Howard Kerr, chief executive at BSI, commented: “2016 continued to see high profile businesses affected by cyber attack and disruption, so it’s not surprising to see it remains as the top threat to business. However, we remain concerned to see that businesses are still not fully utilising the information available to them to identify and remedy weaknesses in their organisational resilience.”

BCI said that for the first time in the report’s six-year history, the threat of new laws and regulations entered the top 10 list of threats facing businesses. Other major changes included the threat of terrorism falling from fourth position to seventh, while adverse weather climbed three positions to take fifth place.

This year’s survey also asked respondents to name threats that had materialised in their business during the past year. Unplanned IT and telecom outage was the most common disruption, followed by adverse weather and interruption to utility supply.

Cyber attack – the top threat in the headline poll – came in as the fourth-placed disruptor. Data breach threats – which came second in the poll of top ten threats – took ninth position in BCI’s list of top 10 disruptions experienced by firms in 2016.

“Nine of the top ten concerns also appeared in the top ten list of disruptions,” the BCI said, noting that transport network disruptions took the place of terrorism when measuring incurred risks over the past year.

David Thorp, executive director at the BCI, commented: “Given the diversity of the threats out there, it is absolutely essential to adopt agile and dynamic responses. Planning to recover from a data breach is very different from planning for the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and – as this year’s report highlights – the risk spectrum can be very broad.”

The BCI’s survey included 726 companies from 79 countries. The BCI said the top three threats varied between regions. In Belgium, acts of terrorism featured higher than the global survey at number three, while in Central and Latin America new laws or regulations were higher than the global results, in third place.