Boards of Directors: Start Paying Attention to Cybersecurity

Fortinet, a Dizzion technology partner, recently put out the findings of its most recent Global Enterprise Security Survey and the results highlight a disparity between the urgency of cybersecurity and how many c-suite and boards of directors view the issue. The major concern is that despite risk and breaches being predicted to increase, many boards are still not taking a prescriptive approach to IT security. 

The Fortinet survey found that “77% of boards demand to know what happened after a security event occurs.”

If you are reacting to a breach, it is already too late. You can demand to know what went wrong, but it won’t change things. Damage has been done to the company that boards and executives are entrusted to oversee. Financial implications will follow (especially if payment card data or personal health information were compromised) and the company’s name will be plastered all over the media (there is such a thing as bad publicity). If you’ve been willfully looking the other way when it comes to IT budget and cybersecurity then you cannot legitimately pretend to be surprised when a security incident happens in this day and age.

On the up side, the survey also found that “49% of survey respondents said their organizations increased their focus on security following a global attack such as WannaCry” and “34% of respondents indicated that [compliance] regulations heighten the awareness of security at the board level,” so it appears we may be moving in the right direction.

A blog post and corresponding infographic by Fortinet highlight data from the survey along with three reasons the company thinks boards will finally start paying attention to cybersecurity in 2018. 

Read Fortinet’s full blog >>

You may also like:

• 2017: The State of Cybersecurity
• Case Study: The Answer to High Security Demands
• Security Breaches Aren’t Going Away, So Start Preparing