Geopolitical conflict requires a new cyber toolkit

Businesses now operate in a nexus where geopolitics, technology and cybersecurity are increasingly intertwined, and CEOs know it. Nearly half of respondents to PwC’s 26th Annual Global CEO Survey said they’re investing in cybersecurity as a response to global instability. These business leaders recognise that cybercriminals, often supported by nation-states, move swiftly to exploit vulnerabilities brought on by war and conflict. 

As enterprises increase their dependency on technology, the need to secure it becomes all the more pressing. And it’s not just CEOs who are awake to the threat. For the first time, cybersecurity and cybercrime claimed spots in the Top 10 in the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Risks Report, close behind climate change, natural resource crises, social polarisation and other existential threats. But recognising the threat and doing something about it are two different matters. Fewer than 3% of respondents to PwC’s 2023 Global Digital Trust Insights Survey said their organisation had fully mitigated the risks associated with new cyber initiatives. 

To improve, C-suite teams should prioritise investment (and seek out innovation) in two areas deemed crucial by cybersecurity experts. The first is defence-in-depth: multiple, concentric layers of countermeasures implemented across the entirety of an organisation’s operations so that an attack that penetrates one layer will be repelled by another. This includes endpoint detection and response, or EDR, which is the continuous monitoring of end-user devices. EDR can be a key defence against the increasingly sophisticated kinds of socially engineered cyberattacks enabled by generative AI. 

The second area to focus on is real-time threat intelligence, which can include up-to-the-minutes alerts and updates, data feeds, live threat maps and dark-web monitoring. The fact is, in a business environment made volatile by geopolitical conflict, these kinds of robust, multilayered defences are no longer optional.