It was the case that there was often a perception bias toward the issues that were dominating the news of the day, he said.

"But it also shows a real change in the perception of those risks by the business community," he said.

It also mean that regardless of where you stood on the science of climate change, the governments, consumers and investors were shifting their behaviour and that meant the change was very real for business.

It was important when assessing risk not to become overly gloomy, he said.

With the exception of a few disastrous events like nuclear war, most risks also presented an opportunity for those businesses that positioned themselves well to meet the challenge.

"Shifting consumer preference means new products and new services can be offered."

There were also limits to how much you could do to protect yourself from risk, he said.

So while you should do all you could on cybersecurity it was almost impossible to protect yourself 100 per cent from attack.

That meant that how you responded to risk was key, Hedrich said.

"The need for business is to become more agile, in the decision making and risk management. At the same time we need to see a shift from protection to recovery or response, to be more agile when things happen."