Critical Digital Assets Under Attack: Expanding Threat Surfaces, Escalating Board Stakes

Critical Digital Assets Under Attack: Expanding Threat Surfaces, Escalating Board Stakes

September 22, 2026 | Accenture, Chicago

The questions were sharp, the conversations were candid, and directors came ready to get to work.

NACD Chicago’s signature technology program brought board members together at Accenture for an afternoon that moved well beyond a traditional cyber briefing. The focus was the company’s digital crown jewels: the systems, data, identities, and digital dependencies most essential to revenue, operations, competitive advantage, and trust.

Three questions drove the discussion: 1: What matters most? 2: How could it be compromised? 3: What should the board require from management before a crisis?

 Accenture’s Harpreet “Harp” Sidhu helped set the stage, followed by three energetic Spark Talks from Jason Lewkowicz, Ryan Whelan, and Nick Baird. Find, Focus, Fortify; Spoof, Steal, and Shut Down; and Controls, Coverage, and Consequences connected the threat landscape to practical business consequences—and the oversight questions directors needed to ask.

Then the audience became the working group. In facilitated breakouts, directors teamed with peers, board advisors, and Accenture experts to tackle realistic company scenarios. They compared perspectives, identified critical digital dependencies, challenged assumptions about exposure and recovery, and developed questions for management. The exercise brought the discussion into focus: not simply what could go wrong, but what belonged on the next board agenda.

The closing dialogue, The Board’s First 72 Hours, brought the stakes into even sharper relief. Moderator Blythe McGarvie joined Kelly Langmesser of FGS Global and Geeta Malhotra of Sidley to explore board oversight during an unfolding crisis, connecting incident response, communications, legal considerations, and trust.

A reception kept the conversations going, giving participants time to reconnect, compare takeaways, and build new relationships.

Our thanks went to Accenture for hosting, to our chapter sponsors for making the program possible, and to every speaker, facilitator, board advisor, and participant who contributed.

 The afternoon reinforced a practical message: Directors did not need to become technologists. They needed to know what matters most—and ask better questions about how it is protected.

What the Breakout Sessions Revealed:

The conclusion

Products and services companies place different assets at the center of the discussion, but the board’s task is strikingly similar. A manufacturer must understand how a digital failure could stop production. A services company must understand how an exposed dataset or manipulated platform could compromise the client relationship. Both need to know what their most important assets depend on, who owns them, and whether recovery plans have worked under test.

The question for the next board meeting:

If one of our critical digital assets failed tomorrow, which parts of our business would be disrupted, who would lead the response, and what test results give us confidence we could recover?