Data creates incredible opportunities for the enterprise, but with that opportunity also comes risk. “Let’s be clear: cybercrime is big business,” says Daniel Baker, technical evangelist at Microsoft.
“Every second 12 people fall victim to cybercrime, with malware costing the global economy about three trillion dollars per year. On top of the tech support scams, which also run into the billions, pirate software with embedded, malicious code will cost the economy $364 billion. This simply can’t be ignored.”
Ignoring it is impossible, but enterprises face two massive challenges. On the one hand, scale.
“If you think about matters of national defense, we don’t ask every retailer in the United States to put an anti-missile system on the roof of their store,” says global cybersecurity expert, Kayne McGladrey. “But we do ask them to deploy cybersecurity measures at scale and at their own cost to be able to defend not only against criminal actors but also against nation-states.”
On the other hand, organizations face a global security skills shortage.
“Most companies, regardless of the talent of their infosec teams and CISOs, are not security experts,” says StarCIO’s Isaac Sacolick. “There’s an entire world of security out there that changes and evolves too quickly, and that requires too many tools.”
So how can companies respond? First, senior business leaders must be made to understand the risks and impacts. “One thing I learnt quite early on is that, when you start to talk about risk, there aren’t too many board members that don’t listen,” says David McGrath of Clubs Australia. Nobody wants to have their signature on a letter warning customers affected by a data breach.
Secondly, companies need to partner with security specialists that can fill in any gaps in their in-house capabilities and expertise. As Isaac Sacolick says, “It’s about who you know and who you’re partnering with.”
The most effective approach, however, is to build security, privacy, and governance into your systems, classifying and prioritizing your applications and data so that you know what measures and levels of protection need to be implemented, and where.
“You see privacy by design change quite often now, and having security thought processes embedded within the actual development of software and business practices is happening more,” says Steve Allison, senior manager for evangelism at Adobe. Allison suggests this goes hand in hand with increasing standardization around cloud and digitization, and around open standards for security and data. These help ensure a level of compliance.
What’s more, strong security can become a competitive advantage, helping the enterprise build trust with its customers.
“It’s not only about ensuring that your environment is being secure,” says Stefan Latuski, CIO at Siemens Mobility. “It’s also about the possibility of using cybersecurity as an advantage when it comes to selling products.” When customers trust your security, you’re more likely to win their confidence — and that only makes it easier to keep winning their business.
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