Protect and survive: act now on cybersecurity 

For busy chief executives and board members, the lexicon of cybersecurity has in the past two years become increasingly littered with catchy names and a rich acronym soup that together describe the latest attacks by criminal hackers, and their tactics. In 2020, we had Sunburst, describing the massive breach of US company SolarWinds’ software, allegedly by nation-state actors, to steal US government data. Then, in 2021, we read about DarkSide, the suspected Russia-based perpetrator of a huge hack that knocked the US Colonial Pipeline offline for three days. And we increasingly hear about tactics such as RaaS (Ransomware-as a Service) and BGH (big game hunting).

All of this can seem somewhat impenetrable, not to mention darkly mysterious, to those outside specialist circles. Yet behind the language lies a very clear reality: as the scale of cyber-risks in 2022 has unfolded, the volume and ambition of attacks show no sign of abating. This is a symptom of an evolving…