The article takes a look at the five actions every CEO should take to increase security. These steps can be applied whether you’re running your own five person company or if you’re in charge of an international corporation with thousands of employees and customers around the world.
1. Improve the Organization’s Security Awareness
Ensuring a culture of security throughout the organization is essential and should cover every employee, whatever their role. This will not only keep your company safe – but it also guarantees that you are providing employees with fun work! Train them on how to protect themselves from cyber threats like phishing attacks and follow up by running training exercises so they can practice what they just learned in order to see if there’s any room for improvement.
2. Plan & Practice Cyber Security
Knowledge of a breach should be assumed, but even if the likelihood is low and you have done everything possible to stop an attack then it’s still worth taking precautions. Today’s attackers are more skilled than ever before which means they will find any weak point in your defenses whether security measures were put in place or not. All organizations need to prepare for breaches by practicing their response plan as well as making sure that proper tools can handle these situations when they arise.
3. Keeping Data Secure in a BYOD World
BYOD has taken the world by storm and IBM is no exception. They quickly embraced BYOD so they could provide employees with a more flexible work environment, but there must be safeguards in place to ensure that this new tech doesn’t have negative effects on company security. In a recent study, half of organizations reported at least one incident related to mobile devices costing them over $250K for remediation costs; we can only imagine how many incidents occur without being detected or mitigated properly because companies simply don’t know where these threats are coming from. Technology solutions should always include an effective governance system backed by strong IT workforce education programs.
4. Safeguard Intellectual Property
In the 2013 report from the Commission on Theft of American Intellectual Property, it was found that 70% of publicly traded corporations’ value is intellectual property. Protecting such valuable information should be a priority for any CEO as this requires both technology and considerable effort in identifying, classifying, protecting and prioritizing assets according to risk.
5. Leveraging Cyber Threat Intelligence
The world is a dangerous place, and every organization faces an endless stream of threats. Security analysts for large enterprises are no exception to this phenomenon. It can be difficult enough sifting through the daily onslaught without having to do it manually! The good news? Applying big data analytics capabilities makes these tedious tasks much easier; security analysts now have access not only to reams of data but also actionable insight into what it means for their organization’s security posture, so that they may make more informed decisions about how best to protect themselves from future risks and attacks.
