The report is a quantitative and qualitative survey of over 1,500 UK businesses and charities. This is the fourth year it has been published.
Kuan Hon, a director in Fieldfisher's cybersecurity team offers her response to its findings and what the future holds:
"Cyber security is now an everyday concern for most businesses but many are still not elevating it to the board room agenda. The report showed that only just over a third of businesses (35%) and three in ten charities (30%) have a board member or trustee with specific responsibility for cyber security.
"Over the next few years, organisations should prepare themselves for more even more data privacy and cybersecurity laws on top of the GDPR, such as the NIS Directive, more regulatory guidance, more regulatory investigations and enforcement actions, more high-profile cybersecurity breaches and more court judgements. Compliance needs to be seen as an ongoing fixed business cost but the benefits far outweigh the potential costs of business continuity disruption, regulatory fines, lawsuits and reputational damage. Incident response preparedness including, crucially, having a rehearsed plan for dealing with cybersecurity incidents when they occur should be a top priority for organisations."
For more comment from Kuan on cybersecurity and the GDPR, contact her on 020 7861 45 45 or at kuan.hon@fieldfisher.com