Accenture report: CEOs lack confidence in their organizations’ ability to protect against cyberattacks despite seeing cybersecurity as vital to growth

Three-quarters (74%) of CEOs are concerned about their organizations’ ability to avert or minimize damage to the business from a cyberattack—despite the fact that 96% of CEOs said that cybersecurity is critical to organizational growth and stability, according to a new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN).

The report, titled “The Cyber-Resilient CEO,” is based on a survey of 1,000 CEOs from large organizations globally.

Accenture’s research points to the reactive way in which CEOs treat cybersecurity, which results in greater risk of attacks and higher costs to respond to and remediate them.

It notes that 60% of CEOs said their organizations don’t incorporate cybersecurity into business strategies, services or products from the outset, and more than four in 10 (44%) of the CEOs believe that cybersecurity requires episodic intervention rather than ongoing attention.

Adding to this reactive stance is the incorrect assumption by more than half (54%) of CEOs that the cost of implementing cybersecurity is higher than the cost of suffering a cyberattack despite history showing otherwise.

For instance, the report notes that a global shipping and logistics company breach resulted in a 20% drop in business volume, with losses hitting US$300 million.

In addition, despite 90% of CEOs saying they consider cybersecurity a differentiating factor for their products or services to help them build trust among customers, only 15% have dedicated board meetings for discussing cybersecurity issues.

This disconnect might be explained by the fact that the vast majority (91%) of CEOs said cybersecurity is a technical function that is the responsibility of the CIO or chief information security officer.

The report also suggests that generative AI holds the potential to introduce a greater level of advanced security threats introducing new challenges that even best-practice cyber defenses may not fully address. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of CEOs surveyed said that cybercriminals could use generative AI to create sophisticated and hard-to-detect cyberattacks, such as phishing scams, social engineering attacks and automated hacks.

“The acceleration of generative AI makes it even more essential