The Role Of Cybersecurity In Defending Any Organization’s Executives

With the frequency of remote work being as high as it’s ever been, cybersecurity has never been more important for organizations to prioritize. The COVID era for businesses has certainly been a struggle, but one statistic in particular has caused some serious worry amongst businesses. Since 2020, beginning with COVID-19’s emergence, the rate of cybercrime has increased nearly 600%. Understanding this jump, businesses are left to wonder: are they truly prepared for these attacks?

The rate mentioned above would mean that some serious levels of cybercrime have been occurring across many different industries. While organizations have always understood the importance of cybersecurity, it’s clear that now more than ever their investments have to be paying dividends. Unfortunately, as it would turn out, more and more organizations are consistently reporting that they’ve been compromised. Without proper protection, any organization’s data can likely become inaccessible, or worse, used as a bribe by the attackers.

Information technology departments of these businesses are typically well prepared for any attacks that come their way. However, what nearly half of these professionals report, is that despite their organization’s sometimes sizeable investment into cybersecurity, their organization remains nearly as vulnerable. Investment into cybersecurity will not fend off criminals forever. In fact, upwards of one in four organizations with up-to-date cybersecurity measures will still be targeted.

The target of most of these attacks are going to be an organization’s executives. Understandably so, as executives will often have the most access to the most valuable data under an organization’s control. Knowing this, it’s much more common for attackers to go after executives within an organization. Unfortunately, even the most sophisticated cybersecurity measures can fail if an executive is not properly educated regarding the types of attacks they may encounter.

Just how can organizations go about coupling their cybersecurity efforts with educating their executives? Above all else, the first step will be to evaluate presence of any executive’s data on popular channels. This includes different social media profiles, professional networking accounts or even archived blog pages or posts that may contain sensitive data. Scraping these pages from the web is most important, as the wrong personal information can lead to the most evolved attacks. Additional vulnerability can be the final blow in any organization, so it’s imperative for executives to keep a low profile on these networks.

As mentioned previously, perhaps most important in regards to protection of executives is their education surrounding these attacks. All executives should have some sort of understanding of what these ransomware or phishing attempts might look like. The best of these attempts will look the most genuine, meaning more executives will likely fall victim to them. However, it’s imperative that they’re taught to look for a few signs in order to protect themselves. For example, any e-mail from a sender outside of their contact list should be opened with caution. Similarly, any e-mail including any links from an unknown sender should never be opened. The most important thing for them to remember is to never share personal information details with anyone through text or e-mail if possible.

Rather than leaving your organization’s executives vulnerable, take a minute to check out the infographic paired alongside this post for more information on how to keep executives safe. Infographic courtesy of Cancom Global Security.