Cybersecurity strategies shift as Canadian businesses invest in digitization during COVID-19

Most (97%) Canadian businesses say their cybersecurity strategies will shift as a result of the increased digitization during COVID-19 pandemic according to PwC Canada’s Digital Trust Insights report.

PwC surveyed more than 3,000 business and technology executives around the world, including Canadian respondents, who tell us what’s changing and what’s next in cybersecurity, privacy and resilience.

“Traditional approaches to cyber are struggling to keep up with the pace and scale of digitization and automation. And they’re slowing down business strategies and impacting both the top and bottom line. So it’s really not surprising that nearly all Canadian executives say their cybersecurity strategies will shift as a result of COVID-19.” said Saj Nair, partner & national leader for Cybersecurity, Privacy & Financial Crime, PwC Canada, in a prepared statement.

Almost 56% of the Canadian respondents expect to increase their cyber budgets, however only very few (34%) of Canadian executives are really confident their cyber budgets are being assigned and spent correctly.

Leading organizations are exploring methods to protect their expanding digital ecosystems as increased adoption of cloud, automation and Internet of Things (IoT) systems can’t be protected with traditional IT Security methods. The top three cybersecurity approaches that Canadian organizations have implemented, and are currently realizing the most benefits from, are security orchestration and automation (19%), modern identity and access management (17%) and integrated cloud and network security (17%).

Cybersecurity’s role now and into the future will be strengthening the resilience of their organizations. Almost half (57%) of Canadian executives plan to increase resilience testing to make sure, if a disruptive cyber event occurs, their critical business functions will stay up and running.

In the next year, 42% of Canadian respondents plan to add full-time cybersecurity personnel to their organization. Many recognize the challenges in attracting and retaining good cyber talent, and so not surprisingly an overwhelming majority (94%) of Canadian respondents use or plan to use managed services.