15 per cent increase ...., page-13

The top concern of CEO's?? Answer - cyber threats. See article below.

"Cyber threats have zoomed to the top of chief executives’ worry lists for fear a data breach could cost them their jobs and take down their businesses."


The opportunity is there for Tesserent to make hay. Test of management / board skill as to whether they get revenue growth. With CEO's having sleepless nights about potential data breaches - it can't require all that much of a sales pitch to get CEO's forking out money for cyber security products.

Add to that the Data Breach Notification Bill coming into law in a few months and there are significant tailwinds for the Tesserent business.

No excuses for modest revenue growth moving forward.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...s/news-story/7e916583efc9ea042973dec2825075d7


WALL STREET JOURNAL

Cyber threats top concern among CEOs


Former Equifax CEO Richard Smith.

• VANESSA FUHRMANS
• The Wall Street Journal
• 1:48PM October 13, 2017
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Cyber threats have zoomed to the top of chief executives’ worry lists for fear a data breach could cost them their jobs and take down their businesses.

The fallout of attacks on companies from Target to Yahoo and, most recently, Equifax — whose CEO Richard Smith was oustered — has thrust more corporate bosses to the front line of cybersecurity issues and changed the way they work.

No longer leaving data protection just to IT departments, CEOs are now often the ones reassuring nervous boards, stressing the importance of data-security to employees and are leading cyber drills to gird for a potential hack. And as especially ripe phishing targets, chief executives — more than many other staff members — are being forced to rein in once-freewheeling email habits.

The number of US data breaches jumped to a record 791 in the first six months of 2017, according to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Centre and data security firm CyberScout. That is a 29 per cent jump from the same period last year.

At the same time, US CEOs surveyed by KPMG this year on average ranked cybersecurity as their top investment focus over the next three years, up from second place in last year’s survey.

“This is something a lot of us just didn’t have to worry about five years ago — someone else was handling that,” says Michael Riggs, chief executive of car-hauling company Jack Cooper. But now, “any CEO who’s not putting this at the top of their priority list is crazy”.

That is partly because their jobs are now often the first on the line. Breaches at Target, Sony Pictures and Equifax all spurred the departures of their bosses. Yahoo’s then-CEO Marissa Mayer lost her 2016 bonus after the attack that occurred on her watch.

“The more it hits everyday citizens, the more likely it will cost a CEO their job,” says Brett Stephens, chief executive of board and executive search firm RSR Partners.

Jack Cooper, which has more than 3000 employees and transports cars for General Motors, Ford and other carmakers, doesn’t just have to guard its own data. It is under pressure not to become the inadvertent portal through which hackers could gain access to its car-manufacturing customers, whose systems interface with theirs. “They are a lot bigger pot of gold than we are, and we have to give assurances that we’re not just OK, but that we’re making this a top priority as far as the CEO and board are concerned,” Mr Riggs says.

Among the biggest cyber risks to companies are CEOs themselves. The sheer amount of publicly available information about them makes it easy for so-called phishers to craft authentic-appearing email urging them to click on malicious links or to initiate money transfers, experts say.

For Michael Hansen, CEO of educational-content company Cengage Learning, that risk means he often can’t immediately respond to email from students and other customers.

He says he makes a point of answering each email, which during the back-to-school season number as many as five a day. Now, though, he says he first has to scrutinise the email address and message or send them to the company’s IT department for verification, which usually takes a couple of hours. “I would love to just hit the ‘reply’ button,” he says.

“But at the same time I have to be conscious that not everyone could be legitimate.”

A few times a year, Mr Hansen and other senior managers take part in cyber drills in which they walk through a simulated phishing, ransomware or other cyberattack and determine when to inform customers and investors of the breach.

For a business leader, “going through the process helps you appreciate the level of pain this will cause in real life,” says John Ackerly, a former tech policy director in George W. Bush’s White House who is now CEO of Washington-based encryption and data-protection firm Virtru.

A cottage industry of training courses has sprung up to demystify cybersecurity for C-suite executives and board directors, who are increasingly putting chief executives under pressure to bolster their defences.
“We’re not turning board members into technologists,” says Tom Ridge, the former Homeland Security secretary and Pennsylvania governor. “But it gives them a foundation to exercise their duty in financial oversight.”