Despite the worsening cybersecurity climate, there’s been some global progress in developing strategies to reduce risk, a new Aon report asserts.

“We are seeing a new level of collaboration between the public and private sectors,” Christian Hoffman, Aon’s Cyber Solutions Chief Executive Officer of North America writes in the report’s opening essay.

Some of the recent advances have come under U.S. President Joe Biden’s fledgling administration, Hoffman argues.

“In the U.S., President Biden signed an Executive order to modernize the nation’s cybersecurity defenses, improve information sharing between the U.S. government and private sector, and improve the government’s incident response readiness,” Hoffman noted. “The Biden Administration reinforced its commitment to combatting ransomware by offering rewards up to $10 million for information leading to the identification of foreign bad-actors that have attacked U.S. infrastructure.”

Hoffman pointed out that there has also been more collaboration internationally, in groups such as the Institute of Security and Technology Ransomware Task Force, which is led by representatives from organizations and agencies around the world. The group, he writes, released a framework to combat ransomware, with 48 recommendations that all involve international coordination as part of the game plan.

At the same time, cyber risk presents an enormous challenge because it is evolving so quickly and attacks are becoming increasingly expensive. That evolution, Hoffman writes, comes as organizations increasingly turn to digitization for their operations, which in turns increases risk of cyber attacks and other related disruptions.

“Key stakeholders within every organization must align to address cybersecurity as an enterprise risk,” Hoffman urged. “A top-down approach, led by the board of directors and C-suite, to position the importance of cyber maturity across an organization is imperative.”

Underscoring the urgency, Hoffman notes that the frequency of ransomware events has jumped nearly 500 percent over the last two years, with costs ballooning.

Now, he noted, publicly disclosed ransomware payments are exceeding $10 million, and attacks risk disabling vital supply vendors and “industrial control systems.”

In other words, no country is immune and joining forces is the only way to manage and perhaps reduce this increasingly impactful risk.

The full Aon Report is “Aon Global Market Insights Q2 2021.”

Source: Aon