The Cybersecurity Guide for Leaders in Today’s Digital World

The World Economic Forum's guide outlines a shift in cybersecurity from a technical support function to a strategic business leadership responsibility. It emphasizes that absolute security is impossible and that organizations must instead focus on resilience—the ability to minimize the impact of inevitable breaches. The guide details ten tenets for leaders, covering business alignment, internal and external partnerships, cyber hygiene, access management, phishing protection, zero-trust supply chains, threat monitoring, crisis management, disaster recovery, and the creation of a security-conscious corporate culture.

• Cybersecurity must transition from a technical support role to a business-enabling function where leaders translate technical risks into business strategy risks for non-technical executives.
• Strong cyber hygiene, including detailed inventory management, risk-based patching strategies, and multifactor authentication, can mitigate the majority of cyberattacks from the last decade.
• Organizations should adopt a 'zero-trust' approach to supply chain security, as nearly 50% of companies fail to assess the cyber risk of their hardware and software suppliers.
• Email remains the primary entry point for attacks, with the median company receiving over 90% of detected malware through this channel; the guide recommends implementing the DMARC standard to mitigate spear-phishing.
• Effective crisis management requires a cross-functional team and a detailed playbook that includes alternative communication paths not reliant on core company infrastructure.
• Human error and misconfigured IT services were linked to 43% of compromised records in 2018, highlighting that identity has become the new security perimeter.
• The potential net economic impact of cyberattacks could reach $90 trillion by 2030 if cybersecurity efforts do not keep pace with global interconnectedness.

APA

World Economic Forum (2019). The Cybersecurity Guide for Leaders in Today’s Digital World. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Cybersecurity_Guide_for_Leaders.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. The Cybersecurity Guide for Leaders in Today’s Digital World. 2019. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Cybersecurity_Guide_for_Leaders.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=The Cybersecurity Guide for Leaders in Today’s Digital World |date=October 2019 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Cybersecurity_Guide_for_Leaders.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2019cybersecurity, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{The Cybersecurity Guide for Leaders in Today’s Digital World}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2019}, month = oct, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Cybersecurity_Guide_for_Leaders.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }