With successful COVID-19 vaccination programs under way, organizations in the Middle East are hitting the ground running as they reset businesses to meet new customer demands and expectations. It’s becoming clear that the top three areas of investment for CEOs will be in digitization, cost efficiencies and cyber security & data privacy.
The first leads naturally to the second and third – more digital processes and services will make companies more streamlined, but they also open up potential risks. The good news in my experience is that corporate leaders in the region are aware of the risk and ready to act – in fact 43% of respondents to our 2021 CEO Survey plan to significantly increase spending on cyber security and privacy (by 10% or more) over the next three years.
CEOs also know what they want to spend money on: measuring risk and putting in place solutions that will detect and respond to attacks in real time, to build resilience from within. In addition, more than half of business, security and technology executives we surveyed in the latest Digital Trust Insight survey also plan to hire more cyber security staff, particularly people with expertise in cloud solutions, security intelligence and data analysis.
However, one of the biggest challenges for organizations, not only in the Middle East, is the lack of employees with the needed skills.
So how can organizations turn their cyber security ambitions into reality?
As a first step, you need to hire cyber security specialists with expertise that is complemented by broader business and social skills. Understanding the scale and severity of future cyber threats requires insight into your overall goals and a willingness to collaborate with colleagues to anticipate risks across all business divisions and functions.
A substantial proportion of executives have grasped this: around half of our Digital Trust Insights respondents are looking to hire creative, adaptable cyber security staff with good communication skills.
Another way to expand the cyber security expertise in your organisation is to tap into your local talent pool and invest in their up skilling. The Middle East has a large, young population of digital natives who are eager to improve their skills in order to advance their careers – in fact 86% of respondents to our 2021 GCC Hopes and Fears survey of employees said they are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain in order to remain employable in the future. Creating ‘gamified’ training programs, led by cyber security specialists, helps students apply their learning to real-life challenges they will face at work, with rewards towards tangible business results.
Business and tech execs in the region are already spending three or more hours a week on work-related learning, according to the Digital Trust Insights survey, and bolstering that knowledge by following thought leaders online, networking in similar circles, and consulting with technology vendors.
Ever-evolving threats
Finally, reputable managed security services providers can deliver a readily available, highly skilled cyber security workforce when organizations do not have the resources to compete for the talent they need, or the experience to train up their own experts.
The best managed services providers continually invest in hiring and up skilling to ensure that their teams can offer world-class protection against cyber threats and leaks. Their cyber security platforms are also constantly evolving to keep up with the latest developments in areas such as networks, cloud computing, data processing, visualization and machine learning.
One of the biggest lessons for me over the past year, and one that I think is shared almost universally, is that none of us really know what is coming our way. Business leaders had to shift focus to control losses and then to ensure resilience in the immediate period of pandemic disruption, followed by a pivot to digital transformation to put organizations back on the path to growth. These massive and fast transformations have to go hand in hand with increased cyber security measures, to ensure that cyber risks are a fundamental part of future business decision making.
Matthew White is a PwC partner and Middle East Digital Trust Leader
The opinions expressed are those of the author and may not reflect the editorial policy or an official position held by TRENDS.