In remarks on Thursday of last week to the
Tulane Corporate Law Institute, SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson
discussed what he termed to be "the most pressing issue in
corporate governance today: the rising cyber threat." To
support his characterization, Jackson reports that, in 2016, there
were over 1,000 data breaches with an aggregate cost of over $100
billion, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. And the
issue has "rocketed to the top of the corporate agenda":
"One recent study showed that nearly two-thirds of executives
identified cyber threats as a top-five risk to their company's
future. That shows how quickly this has become a board-level
issue."
But how to grapple with this problem? Jackson contends that
"the cyber threat is not primarily a regulatory issue any more
than it is primarily a technological issue. Cybercrime is an
enterprise-level risk that will require an interdisciplinary
approach, significant investments of time and talent by
