By early October all FTSE350 Chairmen and Audit Committee Chairs will have completed the new cyber security health check from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, (BIS). PwC is helping companies to complete the health check and build confidence in their cyber security strategy.
According to the PwC Global State of Information Security Survey, UK companies detected almost three times more security threats than the rest of the world over the past year, possibly providing early evidence that the Government's cyber security awareness initiatives are bearing fruit. Participation in the health check furthers the commitment of top companies to make the UK a safe place to do business. Each participating company will assess their top leadership’s cyber awareness and benchmark capabilities against their peers.
Grant Waterfall, cyber security partner at PwC, said: “This is an opportunity for UK businesses to ask themselves challenging questions about how well their leaders understand and mitigate this new type of risk. We are finding that many boards have not yet fully examined their cyber exposure and what it means for how they do business.”
John Berriman, Chairman of the UK cyber security practice at PwC, added: “This new engagement with top UK companies comes at a critical time, when cyber risks are increasingly a focus of attention from investors, regulators and customers. Cyber security risk is very real and growing quickly, and business leaders need confidence that their companies are well protected and have good crisis management in place to resist attacks on their intellectual property, information, services and reputation.”
BIS will use the results of the survey to benchmark overall UK cyber readiness.
David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science said: "Now is the time for the boardrooms of the UK’s most prosperous companies to embrace the challenges and opportunities presented by cyberspace. These challenges should be taken seriously, but also viewed as an opportunity to realise considerable strategic, financial and operational benefits".