Professionals in Pakistan see Cyber security as the most significant business risk: ACCA survey.

• Position: Association of Chartered Certified Accountants

Not a day goes by without a breaking news story about data breaches or personal data theft from large organisations. Cyber crime is one of the biggest risks to businesses to date and globally its estimated costs will reach $6 trillion by 2021.

ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has teamed up with Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, Macquarie University and Optus to launch the report Cyber and the CFO. The global survey, which features views from 1500 ACCA and CA ANZ members, including their members in Pakistan, finds cyber security is not managed as a risk to businesses and is too often left to IT specialists to handle.

Highlights from the report show:

Almost 60 percent of CFOs and finance leaders rank cyber security as the most important or top five business risk.

However, a third of respondents did not know whether their organisations had been the subject of a cyber attack. Few survey responses showed a recovery plan that included much beyond the hardware.

Over 20 percent of finance professionals admitted they had no involvement whatsoever in cyber security within their company.

And 10 percent of respondents did not know who in the business was responsible day-to-day for cyber security.

Larger businesses placed a higher priority on cyber risks (8 percent), but small businesses were marginally (5 percent) less concerned or aware of such security risks.

Cyber-risk is becoming ever more complex with the integrated nature of supply chains. Only 19% of survey respondents said they regularly audited their supply chains.

It is noteworthy that more respondents in Pakistan than in any other country surveyed see cyber security as the most significant business risk, whereas overall its...