Analysis of the analysis: the 2024 threat landscape

Methodology

Five reports were evaluated, each of which had conducted a survey of senior organizational leaders around the world. Each of the reports published a list of at least the top five threats that survey respondents assessed their organization faces in 2024. Each of the top five threats from each survey was then given a score: 10 points for the first place threat, 9 points for the second place threat, 8 points for third, 7 points for fourth, and 6 points for the fifth placed threat. The outcomes of this simple ranking system provided some clear results from across the various reports.

The reports considered were:

• The Ninth Annual Global Risk and Resilience Trends Report: Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) International
• Executive Perspectives on Top Risks for 2024 and a Decade Later: Protiviti and the NC State University Poole College of Management’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Initiative
• 2024 Financial Services Risk and Resilience Outlook: Protecht
• BCI Horizon Scan Report 2023: The BCI
• 2023 Global Risk Management Survey: Aon

The reports provided considerable consistency about the top three threats that organizations face in 2024:

Cyber attacks and cyber-related incidents are the top concern

The five reports clearly ranked cyber attacks and cyber-related incidents as the threat that organizations are most concerned about for 2024. This threat area was top in three out of the five reports and third in the other two, giving it a score of 46 out of a possible 50.

Economic conditions are a close second

Economic conditions and the impact on the financial state of organizations was the second highest ranked threat for 2024, scoring 39 out of a possible 50. This threat ranked highest in one of the reports and third in two others.

In third: the availability of key skills and the ability to attract and retain top talent

Human resource related threats closed out the top three threats, with these mainly relating to concerns about the ability to attract and retain top talent and, therefore, how available key skills might be to individual organizations in 2024. This area scored 29 out of 50 and was ranked second in one report. It was a consistently high-ranking threat, with four of the five reports listing it as a top five threat for 2024.

Further down the list

After the above top three threats there was much less consistency, but two threats gained higher scores than others.

The threat of regulatory changes and the implications that these might have for organizations was the fourth highest scoring threat (12 out of 50).

This was followed by geopolitical uncertainty which scored 10 out of 50, being ranked first in one of the reports. However there are clear links between this threat and the impact of economic conditions, described in second place above.

The top five threats for 2024

In summary – our analysis of five reports looking at the 2024 threat landscape shows that the following are seen as the top five threats facing organizations around the world as we start the New Year: