Four Risks Boards Cannot Treat as Background Noise

"Rather than stolen data making headlines, it was business stoppage that triggered attention. Moving into 2026, the board's focus should be on ensuring business continuity and building resilience in the face of emerging risks generated by AI usage and attack vectors, quantum computing and geopolitics."

"AI risk is not only about attack severity, but also about frequency and more surgical attacks at scale. But what the board forgets is that AI can attack at the very root of an organization's fabric, and that concerns trust. Data drives executive-level decision-making, that's a fact."

"If inputs are manipulated, incomplete, or quietly corrupted in the background, organizations will start to drift operationally, and this will only become apparent when course correction is no longer feasible, and the damage has already been done."

"Partners form the backbone of every successful organization, which operates as a dispersed ecosystem with data moving among cloud platforms, suppliers, managed services providers, and vendors. Attackers continuously probe weaknesses across the supply chain, and when an incident begins with a third-party, the organization cannot divest itself of responsibility."

The 2025 cyber threat landscape fundamentally changed, with attacks causing widespread business disruptions rather than isolated data breaches. The Jaguar Land Rover incident exemplified this shift, resulting in five-week production halts and government intervention. Organizations now face four critical risks: AI as a force multiplier for cybercrime enabling frequent, surgical attacks at scale; data integrity threats that compromise decision-making through manipulated inputs; supply chain vulnerabilities where third-party breaches directly impact the primary organization; and emerging threats from quantum computing and geopolitical factors. Boards must prioritize operational resilience and business continuity strategies while addressing AI-driven risks that target organizational foundations and trust mechanisms.

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