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Gartner expects CEOs to be directly held responsible for lapses in cybersecurity in the next four years. The liability for failing to safeguard a company against attack will be attributed to CEOs’ failure by 2024.

The analyst firm predicted that cyber-physical systems (CPSs) incidents will finally reach corporate in terms of liability for up to 75% of the CEOs.

Katell Thielemann, the research Veep at  Gartner, said that regulators and governments will most likely react to the increase in serious incidents resulting from CPSs by increasing the rules and regulations that govern those in charge. 

CEOs can’t hide

The NSA, the FBI, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agenda (CISA) in the United States have increased how frequent reports and details about incidents are reported. Usually, they concern critical infrastructure-related systems owned by private companies. 

CEOs will no longer exclude themselves from taking responsibility or hiding behind their insurance policies.

Gartner did not include the value of human lives in the equation that led to this conclusion. They had litigation, compensation, insurance, regulatory fines, and reputation issues in the formula, which indicated that the loss would be significant.

A wide blanket

The financial impact of the attacks that result in the loss of human life is estimated to hit over $50 billion in the next three years.

Gartner’s definition of CPSs systems says that they are engineered to orchestrate computation, sensing, control, analytics, and networking, to interact with the physical world, including humans.

The term includes, in its definition, all things connected to IT, operational tech, and IoT (Internet of Things) whereas security encompasses elements in the cyber world as well as the physical world. Such things include critical infrastructure, asset-intensive, and healthcare situations. 

Tech leaders have to help the CEOs understand what kind of risks they will be facing as we move forward.