St. Louis, MO (KMOX) - A new report urges investors to hold companies accountable for cyber security.
The World Economic Forum sites a spike in cyber attacks the last five years and losses for investors.
Gur Talpaz, Managing Director in the Equity Research group at Stifel tells KMOX, just a few years ago many companies believed they could contain the cost of a breach.
"Look at Sony. There was a discussion maybe in 2014 with their head of security that said 'hey, why would I spent 10 million dollars on security to save myself a million dollars in potential risk and damage?'. Well you saw what happened in their breach. Over a billion dollars not to mention the impact on brand equity."
How can investors can guage whether cyber security is a priority? Talpaz says they should ask whether there is a security leader at the top of an organization... and whether cyber security has been discussed at board room level as fundamentally critical.