D&O — Responsibility for Cyber Exposures update from Francis Kean.

The buck stops with the board – or, to put this into legalese: directors of companies cannot delegate their supervisory functions. But what if the landscape in which the company is operating is changing so radically and quickly that meaningful supervision becomes almost impossible? Cyber exposures in 2016 are throwing up just this challenge for just about every company and therefore for all directors, and it’s only going to get worse. The real point to get your head around as a director is that this is a multi-faceted problem. It’s rarely good enough simply to seek assurance from the head of IT or equivalent that adequate protection exists from cyber-attack. Instead the challenge is to really understand the specific cyber vulnerabilities facing each company. To make matters worse (and as an indication of how seriously the issue is now taken by legislators) the E.U. has just introduced probably the most significant overhaul of data laws and regulation ever with stringent new penalties for breach - See more from Willis Towers Watson at: https://blog.willis.com/2016/01/what-risks-will-emerge-in-2016/#sthash.gACCFT5Z.dpuf