Dive Brief:
- Corporate boards of directors report mixed levels of readiness to oversee their companies’ cybersecurity defenses, suggesting trouble ahead as AI continues to upend the threat landscape.
- Most directors are confident they’re adequately overseeing firms’ AI adoption and cyber programs, but worries remain about necessary board-level expertise, the advisory firm BDO said in its 2026 board survey released Monday.
- BDO urged directors and executives to focus on what they can control amid a changing technological environment that has challenged leaders at all levels.
Dive Insight:
In the June survey of more than 200 directors at U.S. companies in a wide range of industries, board leaders expressed high confidence in the systems they had put in place to keep companies on the right track with AI and cybersecurity.
Eighty percent of respondents said their board had “a clear governance framework for overseeing AI adoption and cybersecurity risk,” with 20% saying theirs didn’t. Thirty-six percent of directors were very confident their boards had “the right skills and experience to oversee AI, cybersecurity, and data governance,” while 49% were somewhat confident and 15% were not confident. When it came to grading their executives’ ability to “identify and integrate needed emerging technologies and mitigate evolving cybersecurity risk,” 88% were confident that managers had the necessary expertise to do the job, while 12% weren’t.
Still, BDO said, “directors report that the increasingly rapid rate of technological change is outpacing their organizational readiness and innovation capabilities.”
Fifty-seven percent of directors said accelerating changes in AI and cybersecurity were among the biggest concerns for their organization over the next six to 12 months, placing the issue ahead of trade policy, regulatory uncertainty and geopolitical conflict.
As technology has changed and new threats have emerged, directors have begun to see cybersecurity as a more important skill. Asked which skill sets their boards most needed to enhance their oversight abilities, 45% cited cybersecurity and data protection, up from 35% in BDO’s 2025 survey.
But boards are also contending with a plethora of challenges that sometimes crowd out security concerns. Roughly one-quarter of survey respondents said the growing complexity of their boards’ agendas had caused them to deprioritize cybersecurity and AI oversight.
“Boards cannot control the pace at which AI and other technologies evolve, along with the increasing need for tougher cybersecurity,” BDO said in its report. “What can be within their control is how quickly they strengthen their own technology governance, AI oversight framework, director fluency, and committee coordination to keep pace.”
Amy Rojik, BDO USA’s national managing principal of corporate governance, said in a statement that it was important for directors to “be deliberate about where they focus their attention” and to recognize where they can and cannot “influence organizational readiness.”
“Boards today are being asked to oversee a growing number of interconnected risks and opportunities,” Rojik said.
