There is no shortage of near misses and actual cyber attacks in the news. In September, 12 men were arrested over a plot to steal millions from Santander bank. Two weeks later Adobe, the software maker, confirmed that it had been the victim of a cyber attack in which the private information of 2.9m customers was stolen.
Cyber security is just one of the areas that the world has yet to take sufficiently seriously. It is one of the themes considered by the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations – together with climate change, economic inequality and chronic disease – as needing particular attention. We address these issues in our new report, Now for the Long Term.
Recent research indicates that four in five of the UK’s largest quoted companies are unprepared for cyber attacks. Widely reported threats to systems within finance and banking in recent months are an uneasy reminder that it is not just financial risk models and regulation that need reform; cyber security does too.