2024 Cyber Snapshot for the C-Suite

Hosted by Helen Yates, Editor of Global Thought leadership, this episode focuses on the rich and complex cyber risk landscape that many businesses are facing with guest Sam Cheshire, Head of Cyber at Gallagher.

Sam will cover some of the current challenges facing organisations in the UK today including the continued prevalence of supply chain risk. From the benefits and challenges of Artificial Intelligence to the emerging threats that business leaders should be aware of, this episode provides a cyber snapshot for the C-suite and professionals in the UK.

Insights

Hello and welcome to the Navigating Risk podcast, my name is Helen Yates and I’m Gallagher’s Global Editor. Today I’m joined by Sam Cheshire, Head of Cyber – UK Retail at Gallagher, to talk about the rich and complex cyber risk landscape that many of our clients are facing.

We spoke just after a ransomware attack had brought three major London hospitals to a halt, forcing them to cancel operations and postpone blood tests. It was a reminder of the growing threat to critical infrastructure as we approached this year's general election. I started by asking Sam what was keeping our clients awake at night?

Sam Cheshire: Actually, it's one of the few questions I like to ask clients when I have got them on a call, I'll sit down and I'll say to them, what's keeping you up at night from an IT perspective? Normally, I like to have those calls with a IT manager and a finance manager, so we've got sort of both ends of the spectrum on the call and it's interesting because you get completely conflicting answers from the both of them.

The IT staff are normally fearful of human error, so staff errors, and it's still the number one cause of cyber incidents globally, which was reported last year for being over 80% of cyber incidents emanating from human error. So that's generally why our number one piece of risk management advice is to train your staff, and it's the single best return on investment when looking at it from a cyber security perspective.

But the finance guys, they're generally more worried about the ransomware, so that often follows from the human error. But obviously it's still a massive threat, and there's a financial impact off the back of that.

You can find out more about our snapshot into cyber risk by listening to the full episode of our Navigating Risk podcast.

Keep an eye out for our next Navigating Risk discussion where Helen is joined by Carl Gurney, Director of the Renewable Energy practice at Gallagher who shares his thoughts on the key issues that businesses need to consider from an energy perspective including potential future developments.

Thanks for listening.