Hacked off investors
- Investors run shy of hacked companies, KPMG report reveals;
- 43% of board members have unacceptable skills and knowledge;
- 39% of boards and management agreed they were severely lacking in their understanding;
- 86% of investors want to see an increase on the time boards spend on cyber crime.
HACKED businesses risk losing their investors’ backing, according to new figures revealed today.
A survey of global institutional investors by accountants KPMG found that 79% of investors would be discouraged from investing in a business that has been hacked. The research surveyed 133 institutional investors with £2+ trillion under management.
Investors believe less than half of the boards of the companies that they currently invest in have adequate skills to manage cyber risk. Worse still, they believe that 43% of board members have unacceptable skills and knowledge to manage innovation and risk in the digital world. This sentiment was mirrored in a recent KPMG survey of FTSE 350 businesses, which found that 39% of boards and management agreed they were severely lacking in their understanding of this area.
Malcolm Marshall, global head of KPMG’s cyber security practice, said: “Investors see data breaches as a threat to a company’s material value and feel discouraged in investing in a business that has had its sensitive information compromised.”
Marshall suggests that boards need to consider the following to be cyber secure:
Board directors need to understand and approach cyber security as a business risk issue, not just a problem for IT;
Directors need to understand the legal implications of cyber risks as they relate to their company’s specific circumstances;
