Survey suggests CEOs not taking cyber threats seriously

Corporate leaders are not taking cyberthreats seriously despite rising incidents of hacking across private industry and government, cybersecurity officials said in a survey released Thursday.

A study commissioned by Raytheon found that chief information officers (CIOs), chief information security officers (CISOs) and others responsible for corporate cyber defenses see their companies as ill-equipped to deal with hackers.

{mosads}This concern was expressed in several ways by survey respondents. Sixty-six percent said leaders of their organizations don’t see cybersecurity as a strategic priority, and the same share said their companies need more experienced workers to deal with cyber threats.

Fewer than half said their organizations take steps to comply with cybersecurity standards or have enough resources to meet requirements.

The survey shed light on the disconnect between information officers responsible for cybersecurity and top corporate leaders.

Most CIOs surveyed (78 percent) said their board of directors had not been briefed on the organization’s cybersecurity strategy in the last year.

The study was issued in partnership with the Ponemon Institute, an independent research group on privacy and data protection. It was conducted Dec. 1-21 of 1,006 senior information officers and has a margin of error of 3.8 percent.

“High-profile cybersecurity breaches are closing the gap between CISOs and CEOs by forcing meaningful security discussions into corner offices and boardrooms,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of Ponemon Institute, in a statement.

“In the meantime, our study found there is still a large delta between resources and needs, as security leaders lack both funding and manpower to adequately protect assets and infrastructure.”