Most businesses view cybersecurity as a bigger threat than tariffs or geopolitical instabilities

If there’s one thing businesses today are afraid of—ahead of potentially losing customers—it’s cybersecurity.

Per a recent study from supply chain intelligence firm Zero100, over a third of businesses considered cyber incidents “the single biggest threat to continuity” in 2026, followed by geopolitical instability (20%), trade policy shocks (16%), and labor disruption (8%).

The findings, which were based on responses from COOs of companies with a more than $1 billion valuation, also found that cyber incidents were the “fastest-moving shock” businesses anticipated facing.

COOs were split on whether AI will help or hurt: 50% said it could improve cyber-risk mitigation, while 43% said it would likely make things worse. Meanwhile, fewer than 1 in 5 respondents believe AI will live up to the ambitious productivity and efficiency timelines being sold to shareholders.

“A major cyber failure can do far more immediate damage than tariffs or trade disputes to company profitability—and even entire economies, as last year’s JLR incident in the UK demonstrated,” Lauren Acoba, VP of research and advisory services at Zero100, said in a statement, adding that “while CEOs are talking up AI to shareholders as a productivity engine, inside the business the mood is far more guarded. Operations leaders believe in AI’s potential, but they don’t believe the timelines.”

These concerns aren’t unfounded. While many retailers in the UK have had firsthand experience with cyberattacks, a May 2025 report from Google Threat Intelligence Group and its subsidiary Mandiant found certain cybercrime groups were targeting US-based retail companies.

To get ahead of it, many companies have been ramping up investments in technologies such as biometrics, tokenization, and AI-driven monitoring systems to detect and prevent increasingly sophisticated attacks and fraudulent transactions.