2025: The Year of Cybersecurity

Are Fortune 500 companies prepared for a cyberattack? A recent report suggests 72% of Fortune 500 construction and engineering companies scored a D or lower for their cybersecurity. I am making a bold prediction: 2025 will be the year we see cybersecurity ramp up even further in organizations around the world. Candidly, we have been seeing cyber hacks across many big organizations, and it is time we do something about it.

What’s the Cyber Grade?

When you peel back the onion of this recent report, it is very tasty, so to speak. Cybernews Business Digital Index analyzed 466 companies on the Fortune 500 list. Of that, 34 companies could not be analyzed to evaluate an organization’s cybersecurity posture. The report evaluates risk across seven segments including:

1. software patching,
2. web application security,
3. email security,
4. system reputation,
5. SSL (secure sockets layer) configuration,
6. system hosting,
7. data breach history.

Looking across all industries, 84% of analyzed Fortune 500 companies scored a D or worse for their cybersecurity efforts, with 43% falling into the F category. Only 6% of analyzed organizations earned an A rating for security measures.

Looking specifically at the construction industry, we see 45% of the scored companies received a D rating and 27% an F rating. Only 9% of the companies analyzed in this category from Fortune 500 achieved an A grade. Only 9%! What are we doing here? This is almost as poor as the infrastructure grade.

Construction was not the most vulnerable though. We see, according to this study, finance and insurance companies are the most vulnerable.

What’s the Risk?

The risk is huge. Researchers found nearly 671 critical or high-risk vulnerabilities, with the most common security issue related to SSL configurations, with more than 490 issues found in 466 analyzed companies. 

Furthermore, researchers found nearly 671 critical or high-risk vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit to enter networks and steal information. Researchers also found Fortune 500 list companies have 254 email security issues and 480 total data breach incidents.

Candidly, this is a ticking time bomb, which in some instances we have already seen go off. Companies like Colonial Pipeline, Target, T-Mobile, the U.S. Federal Reserve, Sony, and Tesla, just to name a few, have experienced attacks. Perhaps one of the largest was when more than 270 million Americans may have had their social security number leaked on the dark web. Candidly, no data is safe, and we must prepare for that.

What’s the Solution?

What, then, can be done? Over on The Peggy Smedley Show today, I am talking about how nefarious characters are getting smarter and savvier and how they are coming for our data.  

On the podcast, I share some of the new research that has come out and give some ideas for how to build greater cybersecurity awareness and tackle those cyber threats that are coming at us fast and furious. I also give my top three tips for what needs to be done in 2025.

What are your thoughts? What do you think needs to be done to heighten cybersecurity in the year ahead? What grade do you think your company would receive for cybersecurity? Now is the time to give this greater thought. This is almost as poor as the infrastructure grade.

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