Cybersecurity, Audit and the Board
Diligent Institute and Bitsight analyzed 4149 companies on mid to large cap indices around the world to understand their board oversight of cyber risk.
Key findings
As cybersecurity emerges as one of the biggest risks in today’s business landscape, how are boards overseeing it?
4X
Companies with advanced cybersecurity ratings create nearly 4X shareholder value
5%
Only 5% of companies have cybersecurity experts on their boards
33%
of companies with advanced security performance come from the financial sector
Risk & Strategy
About this report
Our analysis consists of publicly traded large to mid cap indices across Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Leveraging board data sourced from Diligent Market Intelligence in late November 2023, we examined the board structures and directors skillset backgrounds of these companies. The data was then correlated with security rating data obtained from Bitsight between December 2023 and February 2024.
Do board oversight structures influence security ratings?
Companies with specialized risk committees and audit committees have relatively higher security ratings compared to those without.
Are there enough cyber experts on boards?
Only 5% of the companies studied have cyber experts on their boards.
What can boards learn from this report?
Having a cyber expert on your board may not be enough. However, integrating the individual into existing structures such as committee tasked with cyber oversight could impact security ratings.
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