While these entities differ in size, purpose, and mission, the common threats associated with cybersecurity represent a universal concern. Indeed, in my regular meetings with supervisory colleagues and supervised institutions, cybersecurity is almost always at the top of the risk list. Frequently cited challenges by local institutions include: attracting and retaining information technology talent, as these skilled individuals are in high demand and implementing a sufficiently robust vendor management program for technology services outsourced to third-party providers. While we expect firms to adequately manage a number of financial and operational risks such as credit risk, market risk, and operational risk, the nature of the cybersecurity risk differs in one key aspect – motivation. A cybersecurity attacker might be a nation-state or hacker with the intention to disrupt or damage a critical infrastructure sustaining the U.S. and global economy. Or, the attack may be financial in nature, where the perpetrator is engaging in fraud and seeking to profit. These motivations suggest that the cyber threat is more intentional than other risks. This intentionality coupled with the resources of some perpetrators raises the stakes significantly and makes cyber defense much more difficult. We recognize that addressing the cyber threat is a complicated and expensive undertaking, but it is an essential one. All banks, from the largest globally systemically important to the small community banks, are vulnerable to this threat and need to take the appropriate steps to identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover.
Yet the good results can be explained quite logically, since they arise from a combination of particularly favourable factors. First, I would like to mention the remarkable ability of the private sector to adapt to the challenges presented by the globalisation of markets. Thanks to reorganisation efforts in the export sector, results in foreign trade have improved substantially. Over the past ten years, our exports have grown by more than 80%, or five times as fast as the gross domestic product. We now run a surplus in goods trading in addition to our traditional surplus in the area of trade in services. The success of strategies geared to quality and high-tech content are demonstrated by the vigorous growth recorded by exports in high added-value areas such as electronics, watchmaking, chemical and pharmaceutical products. Alongside this we should mention the growth in the exports of services, particularly in the areas of finance and tourism. Overall, our net balance from trading in goods and services has increased from CHF 17 billion to CHF 37 billion in 10 years, in other words, from 4.6% to 8.3% of GDP. Clearly, far from threatening our expansion abroad, globalisation has led to an expansion in our markets from which our companies have been able to derive extensive benefits. The prosperity of our foreign trade depends to a large extent on the good shape of the global economy, whose performance has been very good over the past few years.