It Was to Be Expected
We knew that any type of newsworthy topic was going to give cybercriminals so much opportunity – and COVID-19 gave them so much bang for the buck. Just because this was something affecting the world in a detrimental way would never be reason enough for hackers to take a break. They were going to take full advantage of the situation regardless of how much worse it could make things for people during their time of need or vulnerability.
Community Effort
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) division announced a final directive this week that requires all individual federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agencies to “develop and publish a vulnerability disclosure policy (VDP) for their internet-accessible systems and services and maintain processes to support their VDP.”
Don’t Forget Me
It is easy to get left behind if you become less interesting. No, we aren’t talking about your friends or your childhood toys, although that does happen. We’re talking about YOU. Yes, don’t leave yourself behind. What? How? Explain!
Remember your MySpace account? Or when your significant other wanted you to create a TikTok account so that you could make fun videos – which happened once, and you realized you would never do THAT again.
Before & After
Imagine if you had two emails that were worth a million dollars each. You would do everything that you can to protect those emails and ensure that no one deleted them. You would back them up, have multiple copies in place so that if you lost those emails, you would have a quick way to recover them. You would make sure that access was limited, with strong password protection, and everyone who had access to the delete button was properly trained on how to open and read the emails safely.
Changing Landscape
We all knew that the world was going to be forever changed when the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic earlier in 2020. Just how much it was going to change was unseen – and remains unclear as each day brings new challenges for each city, state, and household in our country.
As a business owner, you too have to adapt to these changes as quickly as they come up, and yes, it seems that they are arriving daily.
Adjusting Your Business Model
New Frontier
The recent conversation with Chris Wiser and Art Gross covered several issues that will continue to be “hot topics” regardless of where we stand regarding COVID-19.
Procedure & Policy
Whether you are going to continue to work remotely or have your team return to an office, the first thing that you’ll want to do is make sure that you do everything that you can to protect your employees and your clients.
Know Better – Do Better
Knowledge is power. And when it comes to fighting hackers, we need all the power we can collectively find. Educating your employees is the key to preventing cyberattacks, and Chubb’s Third Annual Cyber Report confirms this.
With small businesses having a tendency to have limited funds and resources when it comes to “extras”, cybersecurity training is no longer an extra to be dismissed until the time is better. The time is now and the best defense is to make sure you are taking the steps to protect your business.
Employee Buy-In for Security Awareness
Every Cog in the Wheel Matters
Whether your name is on the sign out front, or you are in a leadership role, the success of the business is in your hands. In that role, you know that each department feeds into the overall health of the business, and you need to ensure everyone, and everything is operating at maximum wellness.
Senior Executives Pose a Danger to Cyber Security
You Can’t Teach an Old Dog…. or Can You?
I remember trying to explain a VCR to older relatives. It wasn’t that they were less intelligent or unable to grasp the overall concept, it was that it wasn’t a necessary thing to learn in their opinion. They weren’t interested in the technology; they had fared fine in life so far without having to watch a recorded episode of anything. In fact, most of their lives were spent without television altogether.
Employees: The #1 Cause of Data Breaches
As the multi-billion-dollar industry of cybercrime continues to thrive, employees remain the number one cause of cyber attacks. Despite cybercriminals relentlessly targeting and attacking organizations of all sizes, employees remain untrained on security awareness, leaving them to fight a battle they’re unprepared for.