Consulting firm Protiviti and North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management surveyed 735 board members and executives worldwide about risk issues that will likely have an impact on their companies in 2017.

“Executives are concerned about their companies’ ability to keep pace with the rapid speed of change,” said Patrick Scott, Protiviti’s executive vice president of industry groups. “While the effects may vary across industry groups in terms of different risk profiles, our study shows that no industry is immune to future uncertainty in a changing world.”

The survey also found that perceived overall risk levels seem to be increasing.

“Our survey results support a shift we’ve seen in the focus of board members and C-suite executives towards risks associated with international and domestic economic conditions,” said Mark Beasley, Deloitte professor of enterprise risk management at Poole College.

Executives’ Top 10 Risk Issues for 2017

Executives surveyed where asked to rate 30 risk issues from 1 to 10 based on how much impact they expect them to have on their companies. Below are Executives’ Top 10 Risk Issues for 2017, along with the percentages of respondents who identified each risk as having a “Significant Impact” on their business.

1. Economic conditions in markets we currently serve may significantly restrict growth opportunities for our organization. (72 percent)

2. Regulatory changes and regulatory scrutiny may heighten, noticeably affecting the manner in which our products or services will be produced or delivered. (66 percent)

3. Our organization may not be sufficiently prepared to manage cyber threats that have the potential to significantly disrupt core operations and/or damage our brand. (60 percent)

4. Rapid speed of disruptive innovations and/or new technologies within the industry may outpace our organization’s ability to compete and/or manage the risk appropriately, without making significant changes to our business model. (63 percent)

5. Ensuring privacy/identity management and information security/system protection may require significant resources for us. (57 percent)

6. Our organization’s succession challenges and ability to attract and retain top talent may limit our ability to achieve operational targets. (55 percent)

7. Anticipated volatility in global financial markets and currencies may create significantly challenging issues for our organization to address. (53 percent)

8. Our organization’s culture may not sufficiently encourage the timely identification and escalation of risk issues that have the potential to significantly affect our core operations and achievement of strategic objectives. (55 percent)

9. Resistance to change may restrict our organization from making necessary adjustments to the business model and core operations. (54 percent)

10. Sustaining customer loyalty and retention may be increasingly difficult due to evolving customer preferences and/or demographic shifts in our existing customer base. (57 percent)

You can find the full survey HERE.