- Cyberattacks are increasingly generating systemic economic consequences, disrupting supply chains, markets, productivity, and growth.
- Cybersecurity is increasingly being treated as economic infrastructure that underpins resilience, trust, and long-term value creation.
- As cyber risk grows in scale and complexity, improving how resilience is measured, disclosed and coordinated has become an economic imperative.
With cybercrime projected to cost the global economy $23 trillion by 2027, the World Bank estimates that reducing major cyber incidents could boost GDP per capita by 1.5% in developing economies. Together, these trends point to a broader shift in how cybersecurity is understood, not only as a technical issue, but increasingly as a form of economic infrastructure underpinning resilience, productivity, and growth.
It was this economic framing that shaped discussions led by the Centre for Cyber Economics (CCE) at Geneva Cyber Week 2026. Across two insightful panels, experts from the private and public sectors, as well as NGOs and academia explored both the economic value of cybersecurity and key levers to scale the cyber economy.
Value erosion to value creation
Akshay Joshi, Head of the WEF Centre for Cybersecurity and CCE Executive Committee Member, drew a precise distinction: "Cybersecurity not done well leads to value erosion. Cybersecurity done well, by contrast, leads to value creation." Brett DeWitt, Vice President and Global Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Mastercard, reinforced the point, arguing that cybersecurity is no longer merely defensive spending but trust infrastructure with direct impacts for economic growth. Strong cyber resilience can reduce systemic disruption, limit downstream costs, strengthen investor confidence, and support long-term competitiveness.
Systemic economic risk
The Jaguar Land Rover case illustrated what DeWitt termed the “blast radius” of cyberattacks. Referencing findings by the Mastercard Economics Institute, he highlighted the cascading effects such incidents can have across thousands of suppliers and surrounding local economies. "Cyber risk must be elevated as a broader systemic economic threat," DeWitt argued, "and not just simply an isolated corporate failure."
The 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in the United States demonstrated similar dynamics, triggering fuel shortages and gas price surges along the U.S. East Coast. In the face of disruptions like these, cyber incidents are increasingly being viewed as economic shocks capable of affecting productivity, supply chains, inflation, and public confidence, rather than isolated incidents.
The disclosure gap
How financial markets understand and process cyber risk was also a central focus of the discussion. Joshi noted that 73% of respondents in the WEF Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 had either experienced, or knew a victim of, cyber-enabled fraud.
Öykü Işık, Co-Chair of the WEF Global Future Council on Cybersecurity and CCE Executive Committee Member, cited a recent study of 2,000 publicly listed companies which found that major disruptions triggered an average 4.4% share price decline, while rapid recoveries were associated with a 2.8% increase. Yet this market reward for resilience, she contended, also reveals a broader disclosure and awareness gap, in which investors still struggle to assess the significance of near misses, recovery capacity, ad underlying cyber maturity. "Awareness is now getting there," Işık observed, "but true, honest understanding of why an organization is going through what they're going through is still not [where it should be.]"
Talent, trust, and policy
The second session shifted focus toward the structural foundations required for a thriving cyber economy: talent, trust, and technology. Amine Mcharek, Senior Advisor to the Global Cybersecurity Forum and CCE, quantified the scale of the challenge, noting that Asia-Pacific's workforce of approximately 3 million still faces an absolute shortage of 1.65 million professionals. Globally, women account for just 24% of the cybersecurity workforce.
As economies become more interconnected, cyber investment and talent gaps have begun to emerge as measurable constraints on growth, innovation, and competitiveness – particularly in emerging markets and developing economies.
Sami Khoury, Canada’s Senior Official for Cyber Security, made Canada’s investment rationale explicit: “Cybersecurity is economic security is national security,” he stated, calling for dedicated cyber investment and procurement requirements to strengthen the resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises. Marc Henauer, Senior Political and International Affairs Officer at the Swiss National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC), offered similarly pragmatic framing, describing the role of Switzerland’s NCSC as fundamentally tied to protecting the Swiss GDP.
Cybersecurity as economic infrastructure
Opening the sessions, CCE Managing Director Alaa AlFaadhel distilled the timeliness of these conversations: "By working across sectors, we can advance a more complete economic understanding of cybersecurity: one that supports stability, enables trust, and drives long-term value."
The discussions at Geneva Cyber Week reflected a broader shift already underway across governments, markets, and industry. Cybersecurity is increasingly being treated not simply as a safeguard against disruption, but as a foundational layer for modern economic systems. At the same time, significant data gaps remain in how institutions, investors, and policymakers measure risk and resilience. Developing better tools to measure these dynamics will be essential not only for strengthening security, but for shaping economic policy, investment decisions, and long-term growth.