351: Summer Listening: How Quantum and Geopolitics Are Redefining Resilience

As 2025 draws to a close, many companies are looking back on the year marked by volatility.

U.S. tariffs and geopolitical tensions tested corporate resilience to the nth degree, while the surge in the number of cyberattacks compounded the strain on already stretched systems.

Although some firms managed to dodge the attentions of cybercriminals, others weren't so lucky.

The British car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover was one of many high-profile victims.

A major cyberattack thwarted forced the company to shut down its production line for five weeks, slashing UK car output, costing the economy billions and leaving thousands of suppliers scrambling in confusion.

So what lies ahead? Well, I'm joined now by Steve Durbin, who's CEO of the Information Security Forum, whose recent webcast offered a sobering look at the risks and responsibilities facing the C-suite.

Steve, it's good to see you.

Let's look back.

at 2025? Was it a good year, a bad year, or in line with what you expected?

Good question.

I think from a cyber point of view, I would say it was probably as I'd expected.

I think we saw an increase in some of the breaches, some of the attacks that was to be expected as things continue to develop.

We're going to see more of that.

I think we saw some really good steps from the good guys in terms of defending against some of those attacks as well.

So On balance, I think from the corporate standpoint, I would say it was pretty much in line with certainly what I had expected.

Not good news if you're one of the ones, of course, that was attacked.

Okay, let's go back to that webcast that I referenced in the introduction, because you talked about four drivers posing the greatest risk going into 2026.

Now, the four were AI, third-party risk, quantum computing, and geopolitics.

Slightly unfair question, but which of these four poses the biggest danger?

I would probably have to say at the moment, geopolitics, simply because of the degree of uncertainty.

Now, in the security space, of course, one of the things that we love to have is a degree of certainty because we can plan for it.

We can put in place some of the processes that we need to have in order to be able to combat some of the threats.

And certainly if 2026 is anything like 2025, we're going to have a lumpy, bumpy year.

And that makes it very difficult to really balance out the needs of different organisations in terms of what they're planning to do.

So geopolitics would be my pick.