Upfront of its annual assembly in Davos, the World Financial Discussion board (WEF) launched its 2025 International Dangers Report. The report, primarily based on the WEF’s International Danger Notion Survey 2024-2025, identifies geopolitical dangers as a prime fast concern for international threat officers and the broader threat neighborhood. Moreover, technological dangers will grow to be extra problematic over the subsequent two years, and environmental dangers will probably be a predominant threat issue within the subsequent 10 years. Right here is our tackle the highlights from the WEF report and what it means for threat leaders:
Geopolitical battle and its affect on international commerce is the highest concern right now. WEF’s report highlights that right now’s present threat outlook is dominated by considerations about state-based armed battle, accountable for inflicting havoc for international enterprise and worldwide commerce. Because the invasion of Ukraine almost three years in the past, firms have confronted the tough realities of geopolitical affect on enterprise. Our personal knowledge additionally ranks geopolitical and social instability within the prime 5 components driving elevated enterprise threat. Regardless of ceasefires, new administrations, and coverage modifications, this geopolitical battle remains to be anticipated to stay a prime three international threat by 2027. Danger leaders ought to strengthen their geopolitical threat intelligence and evaluation to gauge the affect to the enterprise.
Misinformation and disinformation tops the two-year outlook record — once more. For the second 12 months in a row, misinformation and disinformation occupies the primary slot on the medium-term outlook within the WEF International Dangers Report. Our personal knowledge (from Forrester’s Enterprise Danger Survey, 2024, and The Prime Systemic Dangers, 2024 Forrester report) helps this and highlights dangers surrounding knowledge integrity, pace of innovation, and interconnectedness of world enterprise methods — three of our prime systemic dangers for 2024. These dangers speed up and exacerbate the unfold of misinformation and disinformation. As firms and governments ramp up funding in AI and AI’s capabilities proceed to quickly evolve, count on the exploitation and weaponization of knowledge to grow to be extra widespread, simpler to execute, and harder to detect.
Cyber occasions spherical out the highest 5 however are seemingly underestimated. The WEF report identifies cyber espionage and warfare as quantity 5 on the near-term (two-year) outlook; nonetheless, Forrester knowledge highlights concern amongst enterprise threat decision-makers globally about velocity of cyberattacks as the most important driver of elevated enterprise threat in 2024. Enterprise threat leaders ought to give attention to how they’re detecting misinformation about their group and the way they’re set as much as detect and react shortly to potential important misinformation occasions.
Local weather threat, a dominant long-term concern, is agnostic to politics or coverage. The temper music about environmental sustainability and local weather threat might have shifted globally, however threat administration leaders stay steadfast that environmental dangers will probably be a dominant power and prime enterprise concern within the subsequent 10 years. In actual fact, 4 of the highest 5 long-term dangers are environmentally associated. Danger leaders we converse to are quietly getting on with executing their plans to cut back their environmental affect, as they perceive it not solely reduces threat however, in lots of circumstances, contributes to value discount and higher use of assets in addition to being good for the planet.
Leaders usually are not paying sufficient consideration to know-how dangers and tech resilience. Forrester knowledge reveals that enterprise threat leaders see cyberattacks and reliance know-how as their greatest drivers of elevated threat in 2024. Nonetheless, one shock from the WEF report this 12 months is that know-how dangers are underrepresented within the present medium- and long-term outlook. Contemplating the dimensions of world know-how outages in 2024, and the chance implications of generative AI and issues for safe it, threat leaders ought to be certain that their know-how dangers are addressed and that their reporting on threat to senior leaders covers this vital space to safeguard enterprise funding in AI specifically in 2025.
Our upcoming report, “The State Of Enterprise Danger Administration, 2025,” will dive additional into the tendencies driving international enterprise threat in 2025 and can publish within the coming weeks. Forrester shoppers can e-book an inquiry or steerage session with any of us to debate additional.
