Cybersecurity oversight is a key fiduciary responsibility for a board of directors and was a significant concern for companies even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced so many organizations to suddenly shift to remote work. Data breaches and other cyber threats pose significant competitive, reputational, and litigation risks and require increasingly costly investments to prevent, detect, and respond to. Changes in the environment as a result of the pandemic have created new risks that need to be managed with board oversight.

he insurance industry has already declared Australia’s second bushfire ‘catastrophe’ of the season despite summer not yet arriving, renewing calls for more government mitigation work.

Non-financial threats loom larger, relative to economic or banking worries, according to the Thinking Ahead Institute.

Global temperature change ranks No. 1 on a list of 15 extreme risks compiled by the Thinking Ahead Institute (TAI). 

The institute, a not-for-profit outgrowth of Willis Towers Watson Investments' Thinking Ahead Group, which dates back to 2002, raised the climate issue two places higher than it was in a 2013 ranking of “potential events that are very unlikely to occur but could have a significant impact on economic growth and asset returns should they happen.”

Currently placing second is global trade collapse, up from fifth in 2013, followed by a new entry, cyber warfare. Tim Hodgson, head of the Thinking Ahead Group, pointed to a general trend of “financial risks falling down the rankings and non-financial extreme risks growing in significance. Global temperature change becomes the highest-ranked risk due to our assessment of higher likelihood coupled with significant impact – in the extreme this would mean mass extinction.” Continue reading on GARP website. 

For a long time, climate change was merely an abstract phenomenon for many people, one that future generations would be affected by, if at all. But the perception has changed dramatically in recent months.

A lengthy, but fascinating story on the NotPetya attack:

"In those physics, NotPetya reminds us, distance is no defence. Every barbarian is already at every gate. And the network of entanglements in that ether, which have unified and elevated the world for the past 25 years, can, over a few hours on a summer day, bring it to a crashing halt."