Experts encourage companies to create “resilient” employees amid cyber threats and attacks

Technology experts said on Tuesday that companies must focus on producing resilient employees who can withstand cyber threats and attacks amid the global shift to digitalization.

“In the traditional sense of cybersecurity, we set up our perimeter defenses within our office, but in today’s world, we’re all mobile. Once your people go out of that umbrella of protection, they’re essentially on their own,” Punongbayan & Araullo (P&A) Grant Thornton Chief Information Officer and Director Leonard B. Duque said in an event.

“We need to shift from protection to resilience. Meaning that we need to not just protect them but also equip them (with) how they would handle themselves when something like that happens,” he added.

According to Roger Collantes, the founder and chief executive officer at the Asian Institute of Digital Transformation, challenges in cybersecurity go beyond the technological aspect. He underscored that “behavioral challenges” from workers and other members of the company also fuel it.

“Actually, the human is the one that is hardest to control,” he said. “Every phishing click, every password, every just-this-once file share is not about carelessness. It’s about human nature.”

The tech expert also noted that the remote work setup that emerged during the global pandemic, along with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), has made companies more vulnerable to attacks.

“Employees today actually want speed, convenience (and) collaboration. They want to do things fast. They are the same things that make us great at our job,” Mr. Collantes said.

“But guess what? They also open doors to risk. So, what do we do? We need to create guardrails,” he added.

In the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025, the Philippines ranked 20th globally among countries frequently affected by cyber activity.

The report said that Chinese threat actors often target the country as part of the “broader espionage campaigns in Southeast Asia” which focuses on the IT, government, and academic sectors.

“In terms of Lehman’s theory, cybersecurity risk and cybersecurity worries are also equivalent to your climate change worries,” Mr. Duque said.

“If you’re worried about your business’ continuity, if there’s flood, earthquake, or fire, it’s the same as your worries in terms of cybersecurity,” he added. — Almira Louise S. Martinez