Understanding the future of risk in the digital age
Guarding against the ever-changing cybersecurity risk landscape
For digital technologies to fulfill their enormous potential, evolving cyber vulnerabilities and threats must be first addressed. Let’s try to understand and analyze why this trend is essential at present.
The instant adoption of upcoming and advanced technologies significantly enhances efficiency while improving dynamic cybersecurity challenges for many companies. Cyberattacks have gone past online account hacks and identity thefts. They jeopardize our code-enabled physical world—our homes, cities, infrastructure, and even the medical devices in our bodies.
Additionally, knowledge about how digital transformation can be applied to risk management will facilitate companies to take a more objective view of digital technologies as both a way to manage risk and a source of risk. A host of brand-new digital technologies, such as AI, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and automated botnets both facilitate attacks and defend against them at a scale, speed, and level of complexity and sophistication that was never seen before. New types of malware, such as crypto mining software and automated phishing tools coupled with emerging technologies, are developing the cyber risk environment. Companies must constantly reconsider their cybersecurity processes to defend against the attack.
New Risks Making Inroads and Its Emergence
There has been a substantial investment in digital transformation across multiple industries. It is primarily because of the fear of disruption by tech-based companies and the proliferation of new technologies. Many business enterprises have realized that digital transformation can capture new growth opportunities while seeing off the threat of disruption. However, these companies also learn that emerging technologies create unknown risks they wouldn’t have experienced before and add intricacies to present risks. The interconnected nature of these risks makes a need to handle them concurrently rather than in isolation.
Many business enterprises have been swiftly updating their technology infrastructures and transforming their business, customer engagement, and essential operating models. Below are some of the key trends that are influencing risk in the digital age:
- Operational controls and redefined governance mechanisms
- Strengthening organizational resilience in the hyperconnectivity era
- Safeguarding against the changing cyber security risk environment
- Overseeing the black box of artificial intelligence
- Owning digital accountability and ethics
- Handling data risks for value creation
- Navigating regulatory transformation for emerging technologies
- Tackling and preventing weaponized misinformation
- Facilitating digital transformation by managing culture risks
Let’s Take a Look at Where These Trends Had an Impact?
- Many security researchers have uncovered vulnerabilities in connected medical devices that can be exploited to modify and change vital signs by hackers remotely to make inappropriate decisions
- Recently, a major IT firm lost millions in revenue as it fell prey to a malware attack that disarranged and messed up computer hard drives, affecting order receiving and processing systems
- Due to a technical glitch in the financial software, a well-known financial services company experienced hassles where it had to face huge losses
What Does This Mean for Business Enterprises?
- Increased complexity in addressing
- Greater difficulty in identifying
- More occurrences of impact on physical security
- Increased frequency of intelligent attacks
- Unnoticeability of cyber risks for digital transformation leaders and other senior executives
Cybercrime is a significant threat to all the world's industries, businesses, and professionals. Regarding the threat of cybercrime on data, technology, banking, and aerospace industries face the most significant threat against attacks. Moreover, digitization is redefining business processes, thus making them susceptible to cyberattacks unless appropriate steps are taken. In an organization, the destruction or threat of intellectual property is the most common attack.
Risks Can be Better Managed by Leveraging Technology
When digital technologies bring in new risks, they also tend to enable new capabilities, improve risk management, and uncover opportunities that were considered impractical and unfeasible in the past. Putting time and money into digital technologies to better manage risk can boost efficiency and effectiveness and redefine approaches that render certain risks inappropriate.
Most business organizations can use digital as a knob or a switch to optimize and rationalize their risk management procedures to obtain efficacies and reinvest in modernizing risk. However, knowing what to target can be intimidating at first, but the following guiding principles can assist companies in distinguishing potential uses of emerging technology to better deal with risks.
How Can Organizations Overcome Some of the Risks?
- Incorporating security as a fundamental part of the development lifecycle and integrating automation
- Upgrade automation of security operations, digital identity management, secure code reviews, regulate escalating costs, reduce human errors, and response and speed detection
- Cyber-war gaming via cybersecurity practices helps reinforce readiness and can improve organizations' crisis preparedness
- Establish a practice of risk intelligence and security awareness by clearly describing security-related roles and accountability
- Improve and fasten the adoption of digital technologies as a process to lower technology complexities
Companies Can Utilize Risk to Boost Performance in a Digital Ecosystem
Business organizations are mindful that digital transformation necessitates more than technology adoption. It involves collaborative endeavors to identify how companies operate, organize, and perform by positioning structures, processes, strategy, technology, and people to build an exclusive digital DNA. Businesses can avoid unwarranted risks and harness risk to power performance by implementing a holistic approach and a risk lens as part of their endeavors.
Conclusion
As organizations seek to create more compelling digital customer experiences, they need to discover how to align their teams that manage product development, security, and fraud prevention to develop controls such as authentication and create experiences that are appropriate, secure, and convenient.
With digital transformation covering most of the industries around the globe, cybersecurity instances have risen manifold, and there is a paradigm shift in the threat landscape. To be tough and ready for threats, companies are making security one of their top targets in their digital strategies. You can talk to our experts to discuss how you can be well-prepared for future threats. ACL Digital can help you find the suitable techniques for your company to create value, manage risk, and boost your performance.