Cyber threats are now a major contributory factor for causing damage to the mental well-being of business leaders in the UK.
According to The Resilience Imperative, a report by Sungard AS, 54% of business leaders polled admit that they had experience stress-related illness due to IT outages caused by cyber attacks or other forms of incidental service failure.
Findings from the report’s survey of 250 c-suite respondents in UK companies with 500+ employees, found 49% of chief executives have suffered from stress-related illnesses and/or damage to their mental well-being. The figure rises to 62% among CIOs and CTOs.
Another of the contributory factors to the stress-related illnesses and damage to business leaders’ mental well-being is the ‘backlash’ that they are receiving, both online and in person, following cyber security incidents, the study suggests. Forty-five per cent of respondents state that they experience ‘abuse online or verbally’, and in some cases even ‘physical threats’.
More than 22% of respondents declared that a result of suffering cyber attacks, IT outages or network failures, have resulted in a CEO departure from an organisation.
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