Hong Kong may be Asia's best place to do business in terms of its overall resilience – and its cyber resilience, overtaking other Asia countries including Japan and Singapore.
The 2018 FM Global Resilience Index ranked 130 countries and territories on their business environment resilience in 12 key areas including political risk, urbanization rate, natural hazard exposure, control of corruption, and inherent cyber risk.
Across all risk areas Hong Kong was ranked 19th worldwide, followed by Japan (24th) and Singapore (28th). Switzerland, Luxembourg and Sweden took out the top three spots for overall resilience.
Rankings for Malaysia (ranked 40th), Thailand (97th) and South Korea (44th) remained relatively unchanged from 2017, where natural hazard exposure, political risk, and inherent cyber risk influence their overall global positions.
The index also says that cyber attacks can have an impact on stalled operations, disrupted supply chains, class-action lawsuits, and permanent brand damage.
It describes inherent cyber risk as, “Vulnerability to a cyber attack combined equally with the country's ability to recover; captured by internet penetration (the percentage of individuals in a country who have access to the internet) and civil liberties.
“Different nations have different levels of inherent cyber risks, as these examples show,” comments FM Global's vice president and regional manager of Asia operations, David Johnson.
“Understanding such geographic disparities and what can threaten one's business can help improve strategic decisions when it comes to business resilience.
Taiwan experienced the most improvement for cyber risk, jumping from 107th place to 50th place this year due in part to an increase in its civil liberties.
Hong Kong also rose from 103th to 69th place due to improved civil liberties and ‘a small increase in internet penetration'.
The Philippines has taken on more cyber risk, dropping from 32nd to 66th place this year.
Even Australia's place in the cyber risk index dropped due to increased internet penetration. The country now sits at 75th place – a drop from 66th place last year.
“The Resilience Index provides business executives powerful global intelligence to aid their strategic decisions when it comes to siting facilities, selecting partners and determining the most effective ways to manage risk,” Johnson continues.
“Globally connected Singapore-headquartered business can use the index to dig deeper than they ever have into geographical differences in resilience, including cyber risk.
FM Global is a mutual insurance company whose capital, scientific research capability and engineering expertise are solely dedicated to property risk management and the resilience of its client-owners.
