Cyber threat needs urgent board level oversight

THE recent attack on StarHub's home broadband network is yet another wake-up call for listed Singapore companies that cybersecurity is a major boardroom issue and the response has to be formulated at a strategic level. It is no longer sufficient to throw increasing amounts of money at the problem and hope that it will go away.

There is high level of understanding that with increased digitalisation of the economy, the threat of cyber attacks has increased. Yet there's still a feeling that cybersecurity is something which is best left to be handled by the "experts". Certainly, the experts will do the heavy lifting but IT geeks are not always the best persons to understand the strategic impact that these attacks can have on the company.

Cybersecurity needs to part of long-term business planning, because a sudden attack can not only result in financial loss, it can lead to severe reputational damage which, in turn, will affect share prices and valuations that will take a long time to recover from.