He says this is a conservative figure, as he has seen reports estimating its cost to be as high as US$575 billion.
The only numbers that he can relate to these figures are the GDP of whole countries, he states. This means cyber criminals stole more than the GDP of Austria, Thailand, Denmark, South Africa and New Zealand, with its $201 billion GDP.
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“That is more than twice New Zealand’s GDP that is lost to cybercrime,” says Sikking, who spoke at the recent CIO100 event in Auckland and Wellington.
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His presentation focused on the number one business technology trend discerned from this year’s CIO100 report – confronting the escalating security threat.
He points out security continues to be a top five CEO concern and for the past few years, and is now trending at number one.
“Security impacts everything we do, from driving here in your car today, choosing an airline or even deciding who is going to make your coffee, let alone the decisions about sharing your personal information online,” he states.
“Security underpins the future views we have of our organisations, our country and even globally; from supporting agile economies, fast IT and the Internet of Everything… we have to get security right for these visions to come to fruition.”
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He says how organisations leverage security across trends like cloud and mobility, will define how they will benefit from changes in the business technology environment, and differentiate themselves from the competition.
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The key issue is that security is still seen as a roadblock rather than an enabler, he states. “CIOs still struggle to get the money and resource commitment to deliver against the needs of the organisation.”
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We have to now assume there is a level of compromise in our organisation.
He underscores the need to change the views on how organisations view cybersecurity.
“We have to now assume there is a level of compromise in our organisation.”
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