The previous year marked a lot of changes in the world of business security, but one disturbing fact is that cyber attacks and breach of data are still the top business continuity threats for the second year and possibly for 2016 as well.
10 Top Business Continuity Threats for 2015
A new online global survey, the 5th annual BCI Horizon Scan report published by the BSI (British Standards Institution) and BCI (Business Continuity Institute) places data breach and cyber attack as numbers 2 and 1 in the list of top perceived business continuity threats as identified by business continuity managers from 74 countries and 568 different organizations.
85% of the respondents cited the possibility of a cyber attack as a business threat, making it the top threat for the 2nd year. The research data also shows that cyber attack is the top concern for 6 of the 8 surveyed regions. As for data breach being a threat, it was cited by 80% of the respondents; placing it a place above its previous spot in the survey.
Below are the rest of the Top Business Continuity Threats for 2015:
- Unplanned IT and telecom outages (moved down a spot)
- Act of terrorism (moved up 5 spots)
- Security incident (went up 1 place)
- Interruption to utility supply (down 2 notches)
- Supply chain disruption (moved down 2 spots)
- Adverse weather (went down a notch)
- Availability of key skills (new threat for 2015)
- Healthy and safety incident (new entry for 2015)
BCI Horizon Scan 2016
BCI and BSI reports that 47% of survey participants identified the increasing complexity of supply chain as a trend, a possible factor for disrupting business operations in event of a natural disaster or a man-made conflict. Survey respondents also brought up the availability of key skills and talent as a threat, with 34% reporting that they are ?concerned? about it and 13% saying that they are ?extremely concerned? about the threat.
Other notable data are:
- 83% of respondents says that the use of the Internet for malicious attacks is a concern.
- 70% use long term trend analysis to understand and assess threats, down from the previous year?s 73%
- 33% of those using trend analysis state that they do not use data to inform their management programs for business continuity.
- 94% of Canadian organizations use trend analysis and only 29% of organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean does the same.
BCI chairman David James-Brown suggests that there is a need to identify and build resilience against the range of threats in the report. He further states that advising organizations on what to prepare for so that they can adjust their business recovery plans is crucial, especially that modern and traditional challenges are always changing. He further states that at this time, horizon scanning techniques are more valuable to assist organizations to be as prepared as they can be in the face of new threats and rising old ones.
BSI chief executive Howard Kerr says that the fact that businesses are still not using the available information to them for identifying and addressing their organization?s weaknesses is concerning. He adds that businesses should see to it that their businesses are thriving and not merely surviving in the face of the current business continuity threats and that there is opportunity to be had amongst all the risk.
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