Building a Digital Fortress to Protect Customers and Business
1. A clear & present danger
Building the intelligence to
create a digital fortress to
protect your customer and
your business
2. #DigitalByDesign
The British and
American financial
systems were recently
tested to see how well
they could stand up
to attacks by hackers
in the wake of the
Sony, TalkTalk and
United States Office of
Personnel Management
security breaches.
The biggest banks in
the UK and US faced
a simulated major
cyber attack from the
Building a digital fortress to
protect your customers and
your business
3. 3
Bank of England and
its US counterparts
this month, as officials
probed the industry’s
ability to withstand
assaults from hackers
looking to steal data
or cripple the financial
sector.
What you don’t hear
about is the constant
and relentless
bombardment
that has resulted
in 90% of large
businesses reporting
an information
security breach. This
perspective was
further underpinned
by a recent PwC study
that recorded a 38%
increase in detected
information security
incidents.
The business risk has
also been exacerbated
by rapidly changing
technology, IOT effects,
digital disruption and
the need for changing
business models.
There is now a growing
awareness that this
topic needs to be at the
forefront of the board’s
agenda.
Bearing this
background in mind,
we recently discussed
with our clients how
SMEs and large
organisations could
build and sustain a
Digital Fortress in
order to establish
a digital resilience
that would protect
their customers and
their own business.
We also discussed
how our clients
could leverage UK
Government initiatives
that will see it invest
nearly $1Bn in the
promotion of cyber
security.
53% of organisations say that lack
of skilled resources is one of the
main obstacles that challenge
their information security (EY)
4. #DigitalByDesign
To become a business
leader in the digital
environment requires
that the customer
and digital strategy is
placed at the core of
your business strategy.
It also means that
protecting client or
customer information
is the essential element
within that digital
strategy. Recent studies
continue to show that
a significant number
of businesses still
don’t have a digital
strategy and therefore
probably do not have a
robust digital resilience
strategy.
A recent McKinsey
report cites that nearly
80% of technology
executives surveyed
stated that their
organisations could
not keep up with the
attackers’ increasing
sophistication, and
most organisations
recognise that there
is significant room for
improvement when
it comes to digital
resilience.
56% of organisations say
that it is unlikely or highly
unlikely that their organisation
would be able to detect a
sophisticated attack (EY)
10. #DigitalByDesign
The author of ‘The Black
Swan’, Nassim Nichols
Taleb, described Black
Swan events as an
outlier that carries an
extreme impact. He said
human nature makes us
concoct explanations
for these events after
they have occurred,
despite their outlier
status, in an attempt to
make them explainable
and predictable.
Therefore, managing
these kind of cyber
Black Swan events
requires a blueprint
in order to deliver
sustainable digital
resilience, and it is
essential to incorporate
the simple Who, What,
Where, When and How
principles into the
model.
John Chambers
CEO, Cisco
There are two types of companies: those who have
been hacked, and those who don’t yet know they have
been hacked.
Establishing a Digital
Fortress (DRONE) by
managing Black Swan events
