Discussions about staying cyber-secure can go on until we are blue in the face but who actually is responsible to ensure a business is protected from cyber-crime? A cyber-security company like us? Your manager? The IT department? The government? Actually, the person responsible is you.
Discussions about staying cyber-secure can go on until we are blue in the face but who actually is responsible to ensure a business is protected from cyber-crime? A cyber-security company like us? Your manager? The IT department? The government? Actually, the person responsible is you. You and every other individual in your company. You see, each person aforementioned is responsible, not just those in the know, so the responsibility actually falls on all of our shoulders.
Find out more about who has cyber essentials here.
At the end of the day, no matter what your role is in your business, we all could fall victim to cyber-crime if we do not make a collaborative effort to remain vigilant.
“Cyber security is a shared responsibility because no single government or organisation can possibly have all the answers,” says Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister. The government have put in practices such as Cyber Essentials and have given advice as discussed in our previous blog which can be read here.
This outlines steps individuals can take to stay aware and reduce the risks of malware being transported into the business network. Employees need to be aware and vigilant of the threats that are out there and that could impact your business. Everyone needs to understand basic cyber-security such as refraining from clicking on unknown links or opening emails from unknown senders – you need to abide by the basic advice that has been drilled into us for a long time now. Drilled into us for a good reason.
Cisco are also great believers in cyber-security being a shared responsibility in their article which can be read here.
Cisco state:
“Small and medium-sized businesses face critical challenges due to limited resources and information, as well as competing priorities. The speed at which technology is evolving makes it difficult to stay current with security. However, better security awareness and planning can help these businesses protect their intellectual property and trade secrets, and reduce loss of productivity due to downtime.
Governments maintain an enormous amount of personal data and records on their citizens, as well as confidential government information, making them frequent targets. Yet many government entities are challenged with insufficiently secured infrastructure, lack of awareness, and competing funding and resource priorities. Better security helps government bodies provide reliable services to the public, maintain citizen-to-government communications, and protect sensitive information.”
Your business can have all the measures it can possibly have in place but it only takes one click to compromise your entire network. Ensuring that staff are educated and they each realise that they need to take responsibility is fundamental. Reliance on specific departments or higher management is simply not enough for you to ensure that the business will be secure. At the end of the day, you and your employees are the eyes of the company and you need to make sure that the company door is always locked and bolted from cyber-criminals.
Having cyber-security measures in place is the first step to ensuring your business is safe but we also all need to remember to be responsible stewards of cyber-space.
