Welcome to your weekly digest of news and knowledge for board directors. 

This week, I’ve been collecting some dire warnings about boards’ vulnerability to cyber attacks. We also look at the latest on China’s unstoppable innovation drive and, even though we aren’t even a week into December, unashamedly single out a chart about how Christmas really is starting earlier than ever.

If you want to catch up with past briefings, please explore the FT Infosys Board Network hub, where you’ll find links to the FT.com articles and research that we’ve referenced in recent weeks and - in the Briefings tab - to the newsletter library.

If you have comments, suggestions or news you think we should include, email me at andrew.hill@ft.com or newsletter editor Jonathan Moules at jonathan.moules@ft.com.

Thanks for reading.

‌“Devious bastards” was the technical term for cyber attackers used by UK security minister Dan Jarvis at this week’s FT Cyber Resilience Summit. Defeating them requires a joint effort from government and business. “We’ve got to . . . make sure that cyber criminals understand that the UK is the hardest possible target,” he told me in an onstage interview.

Board directors play a critical role. Alison Griffiths, who brought her prior business experience in cloud and technology companies to parliament after her election as an MP last year, told the conference: “If you think about where the priorities of an organisation are set, it’s at the board, so if we want to see that culture filtered down through organisations we need to think about that.”

Cyber attacks are inevitable, as speaker after speaker pointed out. Hence the use of the term “resilience”: the goal is that your company should bend, not break.

Attacks are also coming from well-resourced and determined states such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Former security minister Sir Ben Wallace told the summit that his message to banks is “you might be the most sophisticated financial institution on earth, but if a hostile state really, really wants to penetrate your system and it cancels its other priorities, you are very unlikely to be able to stop it”.

Many boards are singularly ill-prepared, however. In fact, their readiness may be declining. A survey by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, whose toolkit for boards is a vital resource, revealed only 27 per cent of businesses had a director responsible for cyber security in 2025, compared with 38 per cent four years earlier. In some respects, effective cyber defence is a version of that joke about how to escape a bear: not by being faster than the bear, only faster than the other person being chased. On that basis, some boards may be perilously close to their pursuers’ snapping jaws.

Do you have a sense that Christmas is starting earlier each year? The FT has run the numbers for you.

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My top FT picks

Top consultancies freeze starting salaries as AI threatens ‘pyramid’ model Productivity gains from technology are stirring a debate about reliance on large numbers of junior advisers. HSBC appoints Brendan Nelson as chair after chaotic search The UK’s largest bank surprised many by appointing the former KPMG partner, who has been serving as interim chair since October. Fall in board pay drives fears top directors will shun London FTSE 100 non-executive fees have trailed inflation by almost 12 per cent over the past decade, new research finds. Is China winning the innovation race? Once China was the world’s factory, but Beijing’s relentless focus on R&D means the country has become the world’s laboratory.

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1. Annual Report on Board Evaluations | Korn Ferry The latest research provides insights into board evaluation best practices and emerging trends from S&P 500 and TSX30 companies.

2. Q3 2025 Gender Diversity Index | Equilar Gender diversity on boards is stagnating, according to this survey, which finds that new female board appointments have fallen to a record low.

3. Paying for Failure: Director Compensation, Oversight Lapses, and Network Effects | ECGI This study examines how director compensation functions both as a mechanism for board accountability and as a tool to divert shareholder attention from high pay packages following major oversight failures. It finds that the consequences are contingent on the nature of the failure.