More than two-thirds of chief internal auditors from the public and private sectors said they see cybersecurity as the biggest organisational risk for 2019, according to a Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors poll.

Data security and protection (58%) and compliance (58%) were joint second in the list of risks, which was based on responses from more than 300 chief internal auditors.

Ian Peters, chief executive of the CIIA, said: “It is not surprising that organisations are most concerned with cybersecurity, compliance and data protection in a post-GDPR world.

“Cybersecurity has been a high-priority risk for a number of years and this shows no signs of abating.

“High-profile cyberattacks such as Petya and WannaCry are becoming more and more prevalent and this means that organisations are only as strong as the weakest link in their IT supply chain.”

The CIIA said “piecemeal” approaches to IT infrastructure planning had been the biggest obstacle to tackling cyber risk.

The institute said that organisations should turn to outsourcing or third party supply chains to ensure they are not vulnerable to cyberattacks.