The average cost of an IA-enabled security gap is $4.88 million and that number does not include reputational damage, does not include regulatory fines, does not include the operational chaos that comes next.
But Harvard says that's not the greatest risk.
The greatest risk is you, the leader who never saw it coming.
The numbers are hard to ignore: Cyberattacks on public systems grew 44% in a single year.
77% of organizations do not have the basic security practices to protect their critical infrastructure.
And today's attacks don't work like those of before, they don't expect, they don't announce, they don't follow predictable patterns.
They learn, they adapt, they evolve in real time.
In 2017, the NotPetya malware spread through the TNT Express network, 40,000 fallen computers, 10,000 off-line servers, paralyzed global operations, time it took: less than 40 minutes.
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost $100 million in days, the attack did not start with a sophisticated hacker or code impossible to detect, it started with a 10-minute phone call; someone posing as an employee.
The technology did not fail, the leaders who never rehearsed what to do when the technology was not available failed.
That's the difference Harvard points out between companies that survive and those that don't.
It's not the software, it's not the IT budget, it's whether the leadership treated security as a fiduciary obligation or as a cost line of the system department.
Before your next board of directors, four questions:
Can your company operate 48 hours without digital systems?
Have your leaders received real security training from IA, not a webinar that no one completed?
Is your IA plan built on resilience or just growth?
Can your people make decisions when dashboards fall and models don't respond?
If you can't answer yes at 4: 00, the problem is not IT... It's leadership. - - - - - - -
