C-Suite and other executives anticipate cyberattacks in the coming year but are mostly unprepared organizationally for them, a Deloitte survey found.

Almost half (48.8 percent) of the executives who responded to the Deloitte Center for Controllership poll expected the number and size of cyber events targeting their organizations' accounting and financial data to increase in the year ahead, but only 20/3 percent of their organizations' accounting and finance teams work closely and consistently with their peers in cybersecurity.

In addition, 39.5 percent expected their organizations’ cyber and accounting and finance functions to work more closely in the coming year.

"Accounting and financial data is the lifeblood of organizational operations—and often meant to be kept confidential outside of highly regulated public disclosures for publicly traded organizations," said Temano Shurland, a Deloitte risk and financial advisory principal in finance transformation at Deloitte & Touche LLP, in a press release. "While there may not have been much need for accounting, finance and cyber teams to work closely in the past, recent years have shown that's no longer the case. We strongly recommend that these teams try to 'learn each other's languages' and tighten their working relationships across silos."

The survey reported that 34.5 percent of the respondents said that they had experienced one or more cyber events targeting accounting and financial data in the past year. Within that group, 22 percent experienced at least one such cyber event and 12.5 percent experienced more than one.

Only  25.5 percent reported having a process in place to quantify the financial impact of potential cyber incidents.

"As cyber incidents increase in frequency, size and complexity, adversaries target nearly any data obtainable and by leveraging system vulnerabilities," said Daniel Soo, a Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory principal in cyber and strategic risk, Deloitte & Touche LLP.

The poll drew from a sample of over 1,100 C-suite and other executives polled during a recent Deloitte Center for Controllership webcast on "Cyber's growing role within the finance organization to enable transformation," on Oct. 26, 2022. Answer rates varied by question.

Cybercriminals have become increasingly sophisticated, Accounting Today reported. Criminal networks are launching more ransomware and malware attacks, and recent developments in artificial intelligence can be harnessed to create and unleash malware.