Cybersecurity: A growing risk

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the threat of Russian cyberattacks on businesses, and underscores the critical importance of cybersecurity to all industries.

 

Highlights

  • For many years, cybersecurity attacks have posed a serious threat to private industry from a growing a roster of state actors, sub-state actors, and criminal enterprises, including Russia; not only from data breaches but damaging strikes on physical, virtual, and cloud-based systems and applications.
  • Economic sanctions and other aggressive moves against Russia to force an end to its warfare in Ukraine have escalated concerns about retaliatory Russian cyberattacks on governments, central banks, and businesses.
  • Such attacks could target financial services in particular, but also harm water and food supplies, manufacturing chains, communication networks, transportation, and industrial production.
  • The renewed cyberthreat from Russia increases the importance for companies to be vigilant in their cyber defenses and cyber resiliency.
  • At Fidelity, we believe cybersecurity is material to all industries and sectors, and is a key component of the firm’s proprietary sustainability research and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings.