More than half of Australian companies to increase cyber budget in 2023: PwC

Cyber budgets are set to increase for 60 percent of Australian enterprises next year according to new research from PwC.

The report entitled Cyber and the C-suite in Australia, highlighting findings from PwC’s 2023 Digital Trust Insights Survey reveals that the top five focus areas for organisational resilience include the global recession, supply chain bottlenecks, catastrophic cyber attacks, commodity market volatility and significant workforce churn.

Interestingly, the results reveal that preparing for a global recession was the top scenario that the Australian c-suite are considering in their resilience planning, as opposed to a catastrophic cyber attack which is considered the highest priority for global respondents.

Supply chain compromises are also of greater concern to the Australian c-suite (37 percent) than to global respondents (26 percent), and Australians are more concerned by commodity market volatility than inflation which was cited as of higher importance globally.

“These differences highlight that the Australian C-suite is highly attuned to the specific vulnerabilities our isolation could cause - that in the event of a global recession, we are more exposed to supply chain pressures and commodity market volatility, both of which could have devastating impacts on domestic industries and the labour market,” the report said.

The report highlights the key methods that Australian organisations are looking to leverage as part of their cyber security transformations in the next 12 to 18 months:

• Cybersecurity leadership
• Employee awareness
• Improved data analytics capabilities
• Board education
• Solving workforce talent gaps

According to the report, “Cyber is a team sport - it should not be siloed within departments or organisations. To build a truly inclusive and holistic cybersecurity culture, entire organisations must be taken on the transformation journey, which the C-suite should lead. Cybersecurity uplift must be expressed as an opportunity, not a burden, and ultimately a vehicle to help organisations achieve their goals.”

When it comes to success in cyber resilience, Australian executives consider improved operational technology security as their main accomplishment over the past year, followed by improvements to collaboration with OT engineering, defence against ransomware, efficiency of cyber resources and security by design.