Swiss firms divided about cyber risks for 2023

Infected: what you don't want to see on your screen. © Keystone

Just over half of Swiss firms told a survey that they plan to boost their cyber security budgets for 2023, in the expectation that more attacks are heading their way.

The 51% of Swiss firms which expect a rise in ransomware and other attacks next year is above the global average of 32%, according to the “Global Digital Trust Insights 2022” reportExternal link, published on Tuesday by the PwC consultancy.

Meanwhile, the 54% of Swiss companies who plan to boost funding for cyber defence is lower than the global figure of 65%; however, this comes after two-thirds of Swiss companies already reported raising their budgets last year.

A good majority (66%) of Swiss companies also backed the idea of a standardised framework and procedure for reporting attacks, with the information then to be used by authorities to come up with industry security recommendations (57%). However, their willingness to release sensitive information about hacks was lower than the global average.

“In contrast to other countries there is no clear trend that companies [in Switzerland] want a new law obliging them to report security breaches,” Urs Küderli of PwC Switzerland told the website computerworld.ch.

However, Küderli added that while more public-private cooperation on cyber-security was necessary – a point made clear by the survey – cooperation is not just about a reporting obligation; it’s also about coming up with a clear plan of how to use the information to raise cyber resilience.

Tip of the iceberg

Between 2020 and 2021, the number of cyber-attacks reported to the Swiss National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) rose from 10,833 to 21,712; this might however have been due to the introduction of more simplified reporting procedures.

The NCSC also said at the time that it assumed the real number of attacks was still “substantially” bigger, as there is no reporting obligation in Switzerland.

For its report, PwC surveyed more than 3,500 company executives in 65 countries, including 70 in Switzerland.