WEF Warns Businesses of the Next Big Cyber Pandemic

The World Economic Forum has finally taken cognizance of the severe threat next-generation technologies may soon pose to businesses worldwide — a phenomenon called the impending Cyber Pandemic.

As a global governance body that seeks to influence and shape future industry agendas, the World Economic Forum (WEF) sees the threat posed by next-generation technologies, such as ubiquitous connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and next-generation approaches to identity and access management, so real and imminent that it may soon have the potential to overwhelmOpens a new window the defenses of the global security community.

Next-generation technologies can generate new risks for the world. And at this stage, their full impact is not well understood. There is an urgent need for collective action, policy intervention and improved accountability for government and businesses, WEF noted. 

“Without these interventions, it will be difficult to maintain integrity and trust in the emerging technology on which future global growth depends,” it said.

The fears expressed by WEF aren’t unfounded and, in fairness, are shared by business leaders, technology evangelists, cybersecurity experts worldwide for a good reason. Since the turn of the century, the world has, like never before, embraced Internet-connected technologies, biometric access management and cloud technologies without giving much thought to their security credentials, the results of which have been laid bare for all to see.

A severe lack of cybersecurity professionals, the inability of organizations to maintain visibility over endpoints and the inability to find answers to sophisticated and evolving hacking techniques have placed immense pressure on IT security teams to maintain the integrity and security of enterprise and customer data.

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With enterprises failing to prevent hackers from infiltrating their networks with alarming regularity, questions are being asked on how prepared they are to face impending challenges posed by hackers equipped with advanced AI and quantum computing capabilities.

Taking cognizance of such challenges, WEF’s Centre for Cybersecurity is now calling on the security and technology community, industry, and government leadership to work urgently on solutions to ensure that security issues are addressed.

“Security is not being considered as an integral component of technology innovations and as such, proper investment is not being made into support (knowledge, guidance, research investment) and incentives (market forces, regulation) for developing emerging technologies securely. Existing operational-security capabilities and technologies will not be fit for purpose, so mitigating threats and responding to incidents individually and collaboratively will require new approaches,” it said.

New approaches recommended by WEF include reducing a global capacity shortage in cybersecurity by enabling the creation of a wider workforce and doing away with fragmented approaches to cybersecurity that are driving an increasing interdependence and entanglement between policy and technology.

To address emerging challenges posed by next-generation technologies that may soon overwhelm businesses worldwide, WEF has decided to take the initiative by creating Future Series: Cybercrime 2025Opens a new window . This will be a joint program of WEF with the University of Oxford – Oxford Martin School. It will enable organizations to share and develop research, insights, and responses to future risks as a community. 

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Enabling stronger operational collaboration between the private and public sectors at the global level and combining their resources and capabilities are crucial elements in reducing cybercrime risk.

“Various significant collaborative initiatives exist, but they remain fragmented and insufficient for current needs. A paradigm shift in the way we collectively address this challenge is thus required,” shared WEF’s Partnership against Cybercrime, an initiativeOpens a new window led by the Cyber Threat Alliance and WEF’s Center for Cybersecurity. 

Do you think a collaborative approach by organizations will be enough to combat the cyber pandemic? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!