Healthy business cybersecurity starts with a check-up
Roger Spears of Schneider Downs discusses how businesses can evaluate their cybersecurity practices and limit their vulnerability to online threats.
The number of data breach victims grew from about 182.6 million in the first half of 2023 to over 1 billion in the first half of 2024. This marks an increase of 490%, according to data from the Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC).
In 2023, the ITRC reported a record number of data compromises with 3,203 total for the year. Through the first half of 2024, however, the number of data compromises was 14% higher than the same period in the record-setting year. In total, 1,571 total compromises were recorded to start 2024.
With this in mind, it has 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, we revisit a conversation with Roger Spears, cybersecurity project manager for accounting firm Schneider Downs, who speaks about 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.