Does this sound familiar?

If so, take solace in knowing that you are not alone, but things have to change. For many companies, growth has outpaced their policies and processes, which can be a risky situation, especially in cyber security.

In information security, due care means “acting responsibly and doing the right things.” While information security is a very complex field, there are certain basic building blocks that must be in place for every company.

Ask yourself:

Do you know your company’s most important assets, where they are located, and how they are protected?
Do your employees understand their role in information security?
Do you understand the major vulnerabilities within your company?
Do you know the major threats and threat agents to your company / industry?
Do you know how your company would respond in the event of a cyber attack?
When the topic of cyber security comes up, most people think about firewalls, intrusion protection/detection systems, and other technical solutions. While these are inevitably part of the solution space, if you are hesitant or unsure of the answers to any of the questions listed above, you could be negligent in providing “due care” for your company.

You probably understand the things that need to be done to make your company secure from an information perspective. Nevertheless, not taking action—even by doing something as small as raising the issue with your leadership—can be construed as not “acting responsibly.” Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two completely different things. There will always be the “hot,” critical project that needs attention, but ignoring what you know to be absolutely necessary is comparable to a “dereliction of duty.” Taking key resources away from information security operational activities to do project work is shortsighted and negligent, and puts you at risk as a company.

Don’t wait any longer. Now is the time to act and provide your company the level of due care that is necessary and expected.

The fact is that most companies still view IT and the CIO role through the narrow lens of providing technology-based services; they have not broadened that view to take into account the stunning changes wrought by digital technology. IT is no longer simply responsible for building, operating, and maintaining infrastructure; it’s responsible for data governance, driving growth through data analytics, cyber security, connectivity and integration. However, since most organizations are peering through the old lens of IT-as-service-provider, they are blind to IT as a revenue-producer. The irony here is that Sales, Marketing, R&D, Finance, and HR—those typically considered revenue-producing—are only able to do what they do because of IT and IT’s ability to stay ahead of the curve.

According to a recent IBM study of 4,100 C-suite executives, only 42% of CIOs were involved in strategy, as opposed to 72% for CFOs and 63% for CMOs. This is puzzling. Since IT touches everything, the CIO has an enterprise-wide vision that would be invaluable in integrating an enterprise-wide strategy. Luckily, the IBM study suggests that this is turning around—the CIO is soon going to be considered one of the C-suite “triumvirate,”: CEO, CIO, CMO.

Another reason the CIO role is more difficult than most is that it bears sole responsibility for ensuring business continuity through critical service level agreements that define uptime, availability and redundancy. At the rate of change today—BYOD and big data come to mind, besides the emphasis on ever-changing end-user demands and satisfaction—it’s a lot to juggle at once. Not to put too fine a point on it, the CIO is answerable in a very tangible way to every executive in the C-Suite as well as the end users, both internal and external.

Mary Shacklett, former CIO of FSI International and current president of Transworld Data says this about the role of the CIO today, “. . . virtually every aspect of the business these days is run on systems. When systems fail, even if the wrongdoing originates in business operations, the CIO is still a ‘best bet’ lightening rod to attract the blame.” Here Ms. Shacklett is responding to the resignation of Target’s CIO after the data breach last fall. To my mind, blaming the CIO underscores the notion that IT is still perceived mainly as the supplier of technology and that with the right technology, incidents like this would not happen. But this is patently not true. It cannot be the CIO’s job to absorb all the operational risk.

It is past time to realize that risk management is critical to your operations and adequate overhead should be provided for it. Preventative measures such as performing regular maintenance and security checks is not the place to economize; economies can be made by killing unnecessary demand and scrapping any projects that have either outlived their usefulness or whose value is questionable or negligible. Give IT the budget it requires to undertake the discipline, training, and governance necessary to do the job right. Data and operational security should always take precedence over functionality improvements if you are faced with budgetary constraints.

The U.S. economy for the past few years has been unkind to IT, and now that there seems to be a slight improvement, organizations will be making some overdue upgrades to their hardware, servers, and storage systems. IT will be at the forefront of these efforts as well as efforts to move to the cloud, coordinate the use of employee mobile devices, mine data, and maintain security. I read somewhere that the CIO is not unlike a conductor, orchestrating separate sections into a synchronized whole. I think that’s about right.

Give me your thoughts on how you see your CIO role. How are you/they addressing these challenges? Does the world look different from where you sit? What would you do if you were CIO or CISO?

According to Cenzic ‘s Application Vulnerability Trends Report: 2014, “While the majority of corporations have the important security building blocks, such as firewalls and intrusion protection systems needed for their security infrastructure, not enough organizations have comprehensive tools and practices in place for securing applications.” Faced with a worldwide shortage of Cyber Security professionals (Cyber Security has only recently become a discipline one may major in!), and companies unable to afford the overhead necessary for the requisite training, this situation is not surprising. Bad news for you. Good news for hackers.

Still think you can go it alone? Do you really understand the sheer magnitude of possible vulnerabilities? Here’s a sobering thought: Everything on the network is hackable. Everything—from your corporate computers to a 3rd party vendor to your employees’ Smartphones. Add to this the risky behaviors employees can engage in—sharing passwords, inappropriate web browsing, copying sensitive data onto mobile devices—and you’ve got exposure. Lots of it.

An objective Cyber Security assessment can assist with evaluation and establishment of controls to:

• Implement an information risk management program
• Ensure network security is adequate, including boundary and internal
• Guide user education and awareness
• Verify malware protection and prevention
• Deal with secure configuration and patch management for devices (network, servers, PCs)
• Manage user access and privileges
• Handle incident management
• Assist with home and mobile working

If you feel you aren’t ready to tackle all the items above, you should at least undertake a basic evaluation to consider only the most foundational building blocks for cyber security.

In a survey of its 3,400 global members, Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) found that although 83% of the respondents recognized Cyber Attacks as among their “top three threats,” only 38% felt prepared to endure one. Make sure you are part of that 38%. If you do nothing else, purchase cyber insurance. If you are ready to take additional steps, we can help.

P.S. On our C4C blog we recently wrote about the fallacy of thinking you are too small to garner a hacker’s attention. I can’t stress the following enough: While big companies more often make the news by getting breached for millions of records, they also have the financial resources to dig out of that hole. Small companies aren’t as lucky. A data breach at a small company can mean closing the doors, for good. Don’t let that happen.

Many companies think because they are small they are immune to a cyber attack—after all, they do not have the net worth of, say, Target ($38B) or Home Depot ($55B) or Walmart ($250B). This is a dangerous misconception. The fact is, whether you are worth millions or billions you are at risk, and your insignificant size might be the very thing putting you in jeopardy.

What makes a small business attractive to hackers? For one thing, smaller enterprises often don’t have the resources to implement the programs and training necessary to prevent, detect, and recover from attacks. Larger organizations do have the resources (including insurance) to weather a breach, but smaller ones may suffer irreparable damage. Another attractive difference is that while larger companies have a more holistic, integral view of IT security that extends across an enterprise, smaller companies tend to have a more myopic view where IT security is relegated to, well, IT. In addition, since smaller companies often have less sophisticated firewalls and detection programs, they may be targeted as a portal for later use as conduits to larger organizations. For example, preliminary investigations indicate that the mess at Target may have been initiated by an employee of their HVAC vendor who opened a malware-laden email. It has been said that you are only as strong as your weakest link, and all too often, that link is human.

Whether you recognize it or not, your organization’s systems and data are exposed in countless ways, including via mobile apps, third party vendors, remote employees, former employees, cloud storage, weak passwords, neglected legacy systems, and social media. In its September 30th report, Managing Cyber Risks in an Interconnected World: Key Findings from The Global State of Information Security Survey 2015, PricewaterhouseCoopers writes,

We also saw increases in attacks on connected consumer devices— such as baby monitors, home thermostats, and televisions— that comprise the Internet of Things, a nascent ecosystem of devices that interconnect information, operational, and consumer technologies. These Internet-connected devices are vulnerable to attack because they lack fundamental security safeguards…

According to Gartner’s 2014 Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management, “more than 92 percent of breaches [are] undetected by the breached organization.”

Are you still feeling invulnerable? No matter how small your organization is, cyber hacking is an equal opportunity threat. As such, cyber security is no longer the province of IT; it is the province of everyone in your organization from the C-suite on down.

Our information security and risk assessment service will help you understand where you have critical risks in your cyber security landscape. If you are feeling uneasy or uncertain about your information security, let us know. We can help.