Rising concern over state-sponsored cyberattacks
More than ever, cyber threats from nation-states are becoming a real strategic risk for businesses. This isn’t speculation, it’s what 88% of cybersecurity leaders in the UK and US are stating outright. These aren’t small percentages; they show near-universal concern. What’s changing is that threats aren’t just coming from lone hackers or even organized criminal groups anymore. We’re now facing hostile and well-funded state actors who operate with precision, patience, and persistence.
These threats usually don’t announce themselves with flashy, disruptive attacks. They gradually infiltrate networks, silently gathering data or inserting themselves into critical processes. Once they’re in, the potential for damage scales fast: from data exfiltration to shutting down operations. The threat surface has expanded because every digital connection an organization makes can now be a potential entry point. If your infrastructure touches government contracts, sensitive IP, or plays a role in national supply chains, you’ve put a target on your back.
What this means at the executive level is simple: Cybersecurity is now directly linked to enterprise value and national stability. Governance needs to reflect that reality. It can’t be seen as just an IT function anymore. Security posture goes on the boardroom table, and it stays there.
For companies operating globally, this is even more critical. Unlike physical borders, digital ones don’t stop attackers. We’re operating in a world where risk now flows across cloud platforms, vendor ecosystems, and connected devices, all in real time. That’s why it’s essential for organizations to detect, respond to, and anticipate attacks before they escalate.
Expansion of threats to critical infrastructure and private sector operations
Cyberattacks aren’t just hitting data centers. They’re reaching into real-world systems, transport, utilities, logistics. The signal here is clear: If digital systems run your operations, you’re in scope. Government agencies are already flagging this. The UK National Cyber Security Centre has specifically called out threat actors from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as high-skill, high-risk operators. These groups aren’t guessing, they’re targeting strategically important systems.
One example got public attention, UK government reviews into Chinese-manufactured, remotely controlled buses. That’s not just about public transport; it’s about what happens when digital command layers sit on critical hardware, potentially manipulated from abroad. The same logic applies to privately owned networks that manage power grids, telecoms, or financial infrastructure. Dependency is growing between public and private sectors, and that makes collaboration non-negotiable.
C-suite leaders need to think about their companies beyond internal processes. If your systems connect to a sensitive supply chain, or play any role in critical infrastructure, you’ve got a responsibility to close those vulnerabilities. Nation-state actors are looking for the weakest links. That link might be a third-party vendor, it might be old software running in the background, or it might be a cloud misconfiguration.
There is growing frustration from the private sector about limited government support. A third of firms say the public sector isn’t doing enough to help defend against these sophisticated threats. That gap is something business leaders need to fill themselves, by investing in advanced detection, sharing intelligence with trusted partners, and securing not just their systems, but their ecosystems.
Ignore the threat, and you risk being exploited. Face it with purpose, and you own the advantage.
Significant operational, financial, and reputational risks
Nation-state cyber threats impact every layer of a company. If attackers get access to your core systems, the consequences quickly move beyond inconvenience. They become operational failures, financial losses, and reputational hits that are hard to recover from. DNS attacks, for example, can take down entire systems. Cloud outages, intentional or exploited by threat actors, can block access to essential services or lose massive volumes of sensitive data.
According to recent research, 41% of organizations rank these types of failures as their top concern. Reputational damage ranks close behind, with 40% worried about how incidents might impact customer or partner trust, even if the compromise comes indirectly through a vendor. And 38% cite disruption via the supply chain as another key risk. All of these risks share something in common: they scale fast and often fall outside a company’s full control, unless they plan for them.
When businesses store data in regions known to host adversarial actors, where governments can directly or indirectly access or intercept information, exposure climbs even higher. Around 35% of executives pointed to this as a major concern. Combined with intensifying regulatory pressure and rising stakeholder expectations around enterprise resilience, the cost of noncompliance or system failure has grown beyond just financial impacts. It now reflects on leadership capability and organizational credibility.
This requires leadership alignment. Cybersecurity teams can’t operate in isolation. They need board-level support and cross-functional coordination to put strong, responsive frameworks in place. If the strategy is just about patching systems after an attack, you’ve already lost ground.
High frequency of cyber incidents and severe consequences
Most organizations aren’t just worried about cyber threats, they’re experiencing them. Nearly nine in ten companies reported at least one cyber incident in the past year. These aren’t minor disruptions. Data breaches hit 31% of respondents, phishing attacks 30%, malware infections 29%, and cloud security breaches 27%. In many cases, this isn’t just about technical fixes; employee and customer data end up exposed, triggering compliance failures and long-term trust issues.
The cost of these incidents is rising, and it’s hitting companies hard. Seventy-one percent of organizations were fined for security violations in the last year. Of those, 30% paid penalties exceeding £250,000. Nearly half faced fines between £100,001 and £1 million. These penalties don’t account for the hidden costs: the leadership fallout and internal disruption. One-third of affected companies saw executives or board members dismissed or disciplined as a direct result of the breach.
The damage doesn’t stop there. In 18% of major breaches involving employee information, companies were forced to shut down operations or change their entire strategy. In the current landscape, an attack isn’t just a temporary setback, it can force a full-scale redefinition of the business.
This is the wake-up call. Executives should consider cyber risk part of business continuity and capital planning, not just operational support. The incident rate confirms that basic defenses aren’t enough. Without dynamic, threat-informed strategies built into your operations, exposure is simply too high.
Getting serious about cybersecurity means recognizing that leaders will increasingly be judged not only on performance outcomes, but also on how well they protected the business against high-impact threats that everyone saw coming.
Board-level scrutiny and increased investment in cyber resilience
State-sponsored cyber threats have moved beyond the domain of technical teams, they’re now part of strategic risk discussions in boardrooms. Executive teams are reassessing how they define and measure resilience. Risk registers are being updated, supply chain exposure is under renewed focus, and incident response strategies are starting to reflect more realistic threat levels. This is a positive shift, but it still isn’t moving fast enough. The frequency of significant breaches and heavy penalties signals a clear disconnect between security ambition and operational readiness.
Many organizations are responding decisively. Seventy-four percent of security leaders have reported increasing their investments in resilience-focused initiatives. This includes expanded threat intelligence capabilities, updated response protocols, and tighter controls across third-party networks. The goal is simple: respond faster, detect deeper, and minimize operational fallout if systems are compromised.
Still, strategy must evolve in parallel with execution. Reactive investments after an incident don’t build long-term security. They only patch short-term exposure. Board oversight shouldn’t stop at reviews and budgeting, it needs to drive accountability across departments. Cybersecurity isn’t isolated to IT anymore. Legal, compliance, procurement, communications, all have roles to play in enterprise defense.
Prepared companies know two things: first, there’s no such thing as perfect defense; and second, resilience matters more than retaliation. You’re not trying to win a digital war, you’re trying to survive it without breaking your business.
Sam Peters, Chief Product Officer at IO, put it clearly: “State-level cyber activity is now a real concern for businesses and resilience, not retaliation, will be the accurate measure of national and corporate defense in 2026.” That perspective reflects what the smartest teams are doing right now, testing systems aggressively, mapping exposure across their supply chains, and aligning with regulators to stay compliant under changing global rules.
Key highlights
- Heightened concern over state-sponsored threats: 88% of cyber leaders in the UK and US now view nation-state attacks as a major business risk, pressing boards to treat cybersecurity as a core strategic priority rather than a technical issue.
- Expanding target scope to infrastructure and private firms: Nation-state hackers are actively targeting critical infrastructure and private sector supply chains. Leaders should reassess digital exposure tied to sensitive systems and demand proactive threat modeling across all connected operations.
- Rising costs across data, reputation, and operations: DNS attacks, cloud outages, and supply chain compromises are among the top risks. Executives should integrate cyber risk into business continuity plans to protect against large-scale disruption and brand erosion.
- Incident frequency is high and consequences are severe: Nearly 90% of firms faced a cyber incident last year, with many incurring fines, executive fallout, or forced operational changes. Decision-makers must invest in preemptive controls and leadership accountability to reduce regulatory exposure and business damage.
- Boards boosting resilience but gaps remain: 74% of security leaders report increased investment in threat intelligence and supply chain defense, but breach rates and penalties remain high. Boards should demand measurable resilience benchmarks and ensure cross-functional alignment on cybersecurity execution.
