Performing a business cybersecurity check-up
Roger Spears of Schneider Downs, discusses how businesses can perform a check-up of their cybersecurity practices and limit their vulnerability to online threats.
The Identity Theft Research Center reported that the United States saw 1,393 data compromises in the first half of 2023 – with 951 of those happening in the second quarter alone. Though data breach patterns can be difficult to predict, the Research Center projects the total number of breaches this year will exceed the previous record of 1,862 seen in 2021.
The effect of these cyber attacks on businesses trickles down to their clients, as well, and it’s estimated that the 1,393 data compromises in the first half of the year affected over 156 million total victims.
With this in mind, it’s become essential that businesses focus on how best to protect their operation — and, in turn, their customers — from cyber threats that can compromise the security of their data.
For this episode of the Insurance Speak podcast, Roger Spears, cybersecurity project manager for accounting firm Schneider Downs, joined us to discuss how businesses can perform a check-up of their cybersecurity practices, and what they can do to limit their vulnerability to these attacks.
While the specifics of a cybersecurity assessment will vary business-to-business, Spears said there are some basics – not the least of which is remediation.
“Suggestions would be perform a penetration test on a regular basis and develop a plan to remediate any findings,” he explained. “Saying that you’ve done a test is great, but it’s not very valuable if you don’t remediate the findings — have some plan. You don’t have to remediate them the day after the test. It’s best to set up a plan 30, 60, 90 days out, but have a plan for remediating those and work towards that goal of remediating.”
Listen to the full episode with Spears above, or subscribe to Insurance Speak on Spotify, Apple Music or Libsyn.