It’s hard to imagine a more challenging year than 2020 for data security. The pandemic meant that millions of employees worldwide were suddenly working from home. More severe cyberthreats — some from highly sophisticated state actors — threatened company databases. And at a regional level, natural disasters disrupted operations and supply chains.
To gauge how organizations responded to this perfect storm of cyberthreats, we interviewed 57 technology leaders during the second half of 2020, including CIOs, chief information security officers, chief data officers (CDOs), and other business leaders in public- and private-sector organizations. The key insight from that research is that cyber resilience — the ability to withstand unanticipated disruption — is no longer exclusively the responsibility of IT functions. Rather, as data becomes more pervasive across company operations and functions in improving business performance, organizations need a comprehensive approach to cyber resilience. Specifically, they need a clear plan for how to manage all aspects of data and cross-functional responsibilities for keeping that data safe.