EY: Top 10 cyber security priorities of executives

Information security has over the past years grown into one of the key strategic priorities of executives and CIO's worldwide. In the report ‘Under Cyber Attack’, accountancy and consulting firm EY asked more than 2.000 executives from 68 countries to define their key priorities in the area of cyber security.

Participating managers were asked the following question: “Which information security areas do you define as top priorities over the coming 12 months?” By far, the highest priority according to executives is securing business continuity, for example through a disaster recovery program. 68% of the respondents indicated this either as a number 1 or number 2 priority. Managing cyber threats and mitigating data loss are considered the number two and number three of the highest priorities.

An overview of the top 10 cyber security priorities:

Strikingly is that Privacy a relatively low priority enjoys across the board. Approximately half (49%) of the respondents indicated that it only deserves a fourth or fifth place in the cyber security priorities. Factors outside the top 10 include forensics, security training, security analytics/intelligence and offshoring/outsourcing security operations.