A practitioner’s playbook for the cyber-ready CEO to tame this humongous threat

livemint.com:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India is now the second most targeted nation in the Asia Pacific (APAC) by cybercriminals.

Earlier this month, C-Edge Technologies, the tech backbone of several banks, suffered a ransomware attack. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was compelled to put out a notice that Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and other payment systems of banks serviced by C-Edge would be temporarily unavailable.

This malware breach once again brought to light the fact that it’s no longer a question of if a cyber-attack will happen, but when.With cyber attacks increasing in both frequency and intensity, the demand for cybersecurity is on the rise and it is the chief executive officer (CEO), not chief information officer (CIO), on the hot seat, answering questions such as: Can you say for certain that we aren’t under cyber attack right now? If we are being hacked, how safe is our most valuable data? Is the organization prepared if our systems go down for an extended time? What is your best estimate of the impact on our finances, investors and customers? According to BCG estimates, cybercrime costs the global economy at least $2 trillion a year. India emerged as the second most targeted nation in APAC, with 2,138 weekly attacks per organization, trailing only behind Taiwan's 3,050 incidents in 2023, as per a CheckPoint report.

The impact of cybercrime on Indian Financial Institutions is estimated at ₹1.67 trillion over two decades. Little wonder then that every CEO is expected to take direct responsibility for protecting the company against cybercrime and be accountable to regulators, the investing public, the board and other stakeholders.