The past couple of years have seen an increase in online criminal activities and attacks. For companies and businesses, the threat of ransomware and information threat has grown significantly. A lot of businesses have started to become dependent on technology, so they need systems in place that are fool proof as well as paying close attention to the data security in their systems. All companies need to invest in separate cyber security teams that will monitor and protect the company’s network, they will also keep testing and updating these cyber security systems.
As well as employing a security team, you will also need to adopt other protocols in your working process that will help enhance data security measures. If you’re a small or medium business, then you will need to especially adopt secure practises as smaller businesses are an easy target.
Discipline and Security Protocols
One of the first steps in attaining high levels of data security is to establish clear protocols for access and operation. So, employees need to be given clear guidelines regarding their access to the network, sources of data and communication channels. A system must be in place to check if employees deviate from the established protocols and a clear identity confirmation protocol must be in place, so employees know what to do if someone they don’t know tries to get into the business.
Update Systems
More business operations are changing their activities to software platforms due to the growing popularity of SaaS (Software as a Service). A lot of businesses today employ a range of software services like enterprise resource management, inventory management, workforce, and operation scheduling, etc. These systems come with built-in security that will need to be foolproof updated because of new threats that might get generated.
Training Employees
By having awareness and knowledge of basic cybersecurity is vital. Since a lot of these cybercrimes are carried out on software platforms employees will need to be aware of the vulnerabilities and their solutions.
You’ve recognized the need for a risk management system, evaluated vendors’ products, and chosen the system that’s best for your organization. It may seem like the work is done, but there’s still a significant challenge ahead: the implementation of the system.
This step is arguably the most important: failure to smoothly implement a risk management system will make it much harder to achieve success. Before beginning implementation, consider the following advice:
9 Steps to Implementing a Risk Management System
1. Define the end goal before starting
It’s impossible to begin any kind of project without a thorough understanding of where you’re going. Doing so will lead to confusion, frustration, and wasted resources as the team moves in multiple directions at once without any noticeable results.
Since you’ve already gone through the process of selecting a risk management system, you know what issues need to be solved and where the system is needed. Formalize this knowledge by creating a document that defines exactly what your organization needs from the system and how this can be accomplished.
If you’re going to use the risk management system in multiple areas, determine your priorities. These should be the areas with the most issues; highlighting these problems will allow the team to tackle them first.
In addition, define success for your risk management system. Are you aiming for a lower number of claims? Would you like to see a reduction in costs? Should your team reduce time spent on redundant tasks by 50%? Whatever the goal, pre-defining success ensures you can measure the effectiveness of the system through implementation and going forward.
2. Set a timeline
Implementing a risk management system is a complex process. It’s important to understand exactly what is involved and what that means in terms of a timeline. The vendor and your team must find a balance: if an implementation is too quick, something may be missed; if the implementation takes too long, the team may lose faith in the system or become upset with the vendor.
Consider these stages in the implementation process:
First, the risk management system must be set up. The vendor will need to import historical data and complete any necessary customization.
The system must be tested to ensure it will work correctly throughout the organization.
All users must be trained in the proper use of the system.
Project management is key when implementing a risk management system. Determine milestones that can be easily measured throughout the process to keep all stakeholders on track, and consider appointing a project champion who is responsible for seeing the implementation through.
3. Build a relationship with the vendor
In many situations, the internal risk team views the vendor implementation team as external stakeholders who are only present for a few weeks or months. This is the wrong mindset. Risk management vendors have high levels of knowledge, insight, and resources that can help you manage both new and existing risks at any time.
By building a relationship with the vendor, you’ve widened your risk management network and increased the size of your risk management team. This can only benefit you as you seek to achieve your goals with the risk management system.
4. Be open to vendor suggestions
Risk management systems are built a certain way for a reason. Vendors have extensive experience with the needs of organizations much like yours. You should always be open to their suggestions, especially if they’re recommending a particular process.
Many teams fall into the trap of purchasing a risk management system only to use it in exactly the same way as their old system. For example, a team that switches from Excel spreadsheets may continue to manually add and report on data in the system, even when automation is possible. This mistake can be critical: the team continues to poorly utilize resources while extra resources are used to pay for the new system.
To avoid this problem, carefully consider all vendor suggestions on how their risk management system can truly improve your organization.
5. Customize where necessary
While vendor suggestions and knowledge are valuable, sometimes they may not realistically fit into your organization or goals. Some aspects of an out-of-the-box system may not be right for you. In this case, some customization is ideal. For example, consider your organization’s hierarchy, the ideal usage of the system, and your reporting needs. Only you can determine exactly how a risk management system will best fit into these requirements.
6. Be flexible
Adapting to changing circumstances is important when implementing a risk management system. Tasks may take more time than expected, there may be technical difficulties, or an employee may have a particularly hard time during training. You must understand that difficulties like these are bound to happen and typically only involve a small adjustment. Being ready to re-prioritize or modify existing plans allows all stakeholders to feel comfortable through the implementation process, even if not everything goes as planned.
7. Involve users and decision-makers
Another common mistake in the implementation of risk management systems is involving only decision-makers. While executives and top managers may be able to pick the system that best suits organizational goals, they aren’t the ones that will be working inside the system every day.
Involving users from the beginning ensures that the entire risk team is onboard or even excited about the change. They can also provide valuable insight into implementation: they may have needs or desires that decision-makers wouldn’t know about and can reduce complications in the implementation process.
8. Communicate
Any significant organizational change is likely to fail without regular and proper communication. When implementing a risk management system, there are two critical communication avenues: the vendor and employees.
No matter how robust their system, vendors cannot read your mind. You must explain your system, timeline, and security requirements as well as how involved you expect them to be in the implementation process. This will keep both teams on the same page and prevent frustrating back-and-forth conversation.
On the employee side, users need to be taught what to expect from the system. In some cases, users may feel that they are being replaced by the system; it is your job to reassure them that the system will actually make their jobs easier and more meaningful by streamlining complicated processes. Tell your employees what will change and how it will impact them individually, and make them aware of these changes well in advance. Educating them on the role they must play in the implementation of the risk management system will simplify the process.
9. Implement in stages
While risk management systems often have extensive functionality, it can be overwhelming for a team to implement them all at once. This is frustrating to employees and can actually lower the chances of system success. Instead, choose the one area that is most in need of the system and start there. This allows the team to gradually become comfortable with the system and then expand their capabilities.
Using one small change as an example of the effectiveness of the system can also help win over resistant employees and prove that the system has value.
Risk management system implementation can seem like a daunting task. Following this advice will put you well on your way towards achieving your risk management goals.
If there’s an attack on the country, the military mobilizes. When a natural disaster strikes, recovery plans go into effect. Should an infectious disease start to spread, health officials launch a containment strategy. Response plans are critical to recovery in emergency situations, but when it comes to cybersecurity, a majority of industries are not paying attention.“The reality is no matter how amazing you are with your prevention capabilities, you’re going to be hacked,” said Mohammad Jalali, a research faculty member at MIT Sloan whose work is currently focused on public health and organizational cybersecurity. “Then what are you going to do? Do you already have a good response plan in place that is continuously updated? And communication channels are defined, and stakeholder responsibilities are defined? Typically the answer in most organizations is no.”To help address cybersecurity weaknesses in organizations, Jalali and fellow researchers at Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan Bethany Russell, Sabina Razak, and William Gordon, built an eight aggregated response strategies framework. They call it EARS.
Jalali and his team reviewed 13 journal articles involving cybersecurity and health care to develop EARS. While the cases are related to health care organizations, the strategies can apply to a variety of industries.
The EARS framework is divided into two halves: pre-incident and post-incident.
Pre-incident
1 — Construction of an incident response plan: This plan should include steps for detection, investigation, containment, eradication, and recovery.
“One of the common weaknesses that organizations have is they put together an incident response plan, but the problem is that documentation is usually very generic, it’s not specific to the organization,” Jalali said. “There is no clear, specific, actionable list of items.”
Make sure that everyone in the organization knows the plan, not just the employees in the IT department. Set clear channels of communication, and when assigning responsibilities, make sure they are clearly defined.
2 — Construction of an information security policy to act as a deterrent: Clearly defined security steps establish and encourage compliance.
“Many companies think that compliance is security,” Jalali said. “[That] if you just follow the information you’ll be taken care of.”
Don’t set the bar so low that the organization is not secure. Regulations should ensure an understanding of cyber threats. Establish motivational reasons for the response teams to follow reporting policies. Compliance should go hand in hand with continuous improvement.
3 — Involvement of key personnel within the organization: No matter the size of an organization, key leaders need to be educated on the importance of cybersecurity and be ready to act according to the response plan.
Leaders don’t have to be cybersecurity experts, but they need to understand the impact an incident will have on their organization. The more informed they are, the more involved they can be in a response plan.
4 — Regular mock testing of recovery plans: Recovery exercises help organizations stress-test plans and train employees on proper response protocols.
If the organization only tests its recovery plan during an actual emergency, it’s likely to run into serious issues, which could increase the amount of damage caused by the cyber incident.
The shift from a reactive to proactive stance can help an organization identify weaknesses or gaps in its recovery plan, and address them before an incident occurs.
Post-incident
5 — Containment of the incident: Containment involves both proactive and reactive measures.
It’s easier to cut off infected devices from a network if they’re already segmented from other devices and connections, prior to an incident. The researchers concede that it’s not always possible to segment networks, nor to immediately disconnect it from the whole system. At the very least, immediately report the infected device to the organization’s IT team to contain the incident.
6 — Embedded ethics and involvement of others beyond the organization: It’s important to remember that all of an organization’s stakeholders could be impacted by a cyber incident.
Promptly notify legal counsel and relevant regulatory and law enforcement agencies. Consider help from external resources and share information about the cyber threat.
7 — Investigation and documentation of the incident: Be timely and thorough; every step of the pre- and post-incident reaction should be documented.
The investigation should aim to find the root technical cause of the issue, as well as weaknesses that could prevent future attacks. Proper documentation is a necessity for this analysis.
8 — Construction of a damage assessment and recovery algorithm: Organizations should self-evaluate after the incident.
While computers are where cyber attacks happen, they can also be used to help with recovery. Organizations can leverage the power of computers, especially artificial intelligence, for real-time detection and containment of incidents.
“The commonly used frameworks for incident response strategies often miss this essential step,” Jalali said, “even though there are already AI-based products for this very purpose.”
First, it was the Ticketfly hack in May. My email was among the 27 million accounts stolen from the events company.
According to the website Have i been pwned?, which monitors data breaches, my personal email has also been found in records stolen from sites like Tumblr and LinkedIn.
By the time the Ticketmaster and PageUp data breach notification emails landed in my inbox weeks later, my attitude had devolved from concern to extreme digital nihilism.
Am I suffering from data-breach fatigue?
Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at New America who writes about cybersecurity, is worried that after all the hacks, data dumps and servers left unprotected, we may be tuning out.
Data breach fatigue
Troy Hunt, who runs Have i been pwned?, has seen the rate and size of data breaches grow since he founded the site in late 2013.
Rather than becoming fatigued, he suggested people simply accept such incidents are now “a normal part of online life”.
“I’m actually finding … that people are judging companies less on the fact they’ve had [a data breach], and more on how they’ve dealt with it,” Mr. Hunt said.
What should I do after a data breach?
Change your account password and get a password manager
Report financial losses to the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network
Check your bank account for unusual charges
If your credit card details have been lost, contact your bank
We don’t yet know much about “data breach fatigue” as ameasurable phenomenon, agreed Cassandra Cross, an online fraud researcher at the Queensland University of Technology.
“I don’t really think we know … whether people are making choices to do things differently, [or] whether they’re just ignoring it,” she said, suggesting more work needs to be done.
Rui Chen, an information systems academic at Iowa State University, investigated consumer attitudes after online security incidents.
In 2015, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lost more than 4.2 million personnel files, among other sensitive documents.
Dr. Chen and his team used sentiment-analysis tools to track the emotional content of 18,764 tweets containing the hashtag #OPMHack.
After events associated with the hack — from the initial breach announcement to the OPM director’s resignation — they saw a large drop-off in reaction.
In other words, Dr. Chen said, “we can see that the public is gradually losing interest in reacting to this news”.
The effects of ‘fatigue’
If people don’t take breaches seriously, they may not follow instructions to protect themselves, such as changing passwords or using credit-monitoring services.
But our understanding of how people do respond is limited.
“One thing could be there are just so many incidents of data breach happening … people consider it typical,” Dr. Chen speculated.
“It’s the norm of this digital world.”
These incidents can also feel quite abstract, Dr. Cross added.
Consider the compromising of more than 359 million MySpace accounts or more than 164 million LinkedIn accounts — these are almost unimaginable numbers.
For victims, there’s also a difference of perception between your details being lost or stolen and actual misuse of that information — in the form of identity theft, for example, which is estimated to cost Australia $2.2 billion each year.
“They’re just one small individual within an entire group, and they don’t feel that they are particularly valuable in terms of a target,” she said.
Real-world effects
New America’s Peter Singer suggested we won’t see decisive action from the government on these issues until breaches begin to have a dramatic impact in the physical world.
Connected devices, from fridges that can be accessed online to driverless cars, will make this more dangerous — and likely.
You might start caring more when a hacker uses stolen credentials to turn your lights on and off remotely.
“I think … what will inevitably happen is some type of bad outcome,” Mr. Singer added.
A badly handled data breach can also dent a company’s reputation.
Take Uber, which initially tried to cover up the exfiltration of the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of 57 million users.
Mr. Hunt also sees companies being judged harshly if a breach exposes their poor security posture, such as storing passwords in plain text without cryptographic protection.
On the flip side, he cited the Red Cross Blood Service’s reaction as “the gold standard” after it lost donor information in 2016.
The group was swift to act and tell the public — and was apologetic throughout.
As data breaches continue, Mr. Hunt hopes people will avoid fatigue and take control: get a password manager, make all passwords unique and turn on two-factor authentication.
“These are really basic things that we can all do, and they fundamentally change the impact of a data breach,” he said.
While the number of incidents and casualties declined in 2017, a report released Monday by Marsh L.L.C. said terrorism is still a significant threat and that the insurance market is adapting to handle the evolving risk.
Marsh’s 2018 Terrorism Risk Insurance Report, which explores the state of the terrorism insurance marketplace, said that in the wake of recent events, terrorism insurers are expanding terrorism definitions to include active assailant events.
In some cases, the report said, insurers also are developing specialty products that offer first- and third-party business interruption protection for businesses that suffer lost income or revenue without the need for a direct property damage trigger.
Although fewer people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2017 than in 2016, the Marsh report said the means of attack and perpetrators have shifted.
“Past attacks were carried out primarily by specific groups against perceived high-value-high-profile targets,” the report said. “While that threat remains, many recent attacks have come against soft targets and been perpetrated by ‘lone wolves’ and small groups with no direct connection to known terrorist organizations. Weapons of choice now include vehicles, knives and other handheld devices.”
In 2017, the report said, pricing increased in five of the 17 industries surveyed by Marsh, with the sharpest increases being felt by hospitality and gaming companies, public entities and nonprofit organizations, which have been targets of terrorist acts in recent years.
Pricing declined in seven industries, the report said, most notably for energy and mining and construction companies, reflecting the generally positive conditions in the property insurance market prior to the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season.
Sixty-two percent of U.S. companies in 2017 purchased coverage embedded in property policies under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2015, or TRIPRA. Companies in the Northeast U.S. were most likely to purchase terrorism insurance, Marsh said.
The number of Marsh-managed captive insurers actively underwriting one or more insurance programs that access the TRIPRA increased 44% to 166 captives in 2017.
After incurring sizable ransomware losses in 2017, kidnap and ransom insurers are seeking to restrict coverage for cyber risks in their policies.
Terrorism insurance capacity remains strong, the report said, but pricing could increase as global insurance costs generally increase following natural catastrophe losses in 2017. January 2018 year-over-year pricing changes for a majority of reinsurance program renewals that included terrorism coverage averaged flat to an increase of 10% on a risk-adjusted basis, according to the report.
The Marsh report made several suggestions for businesses in the face of evolving terrorism risk, including continually reviewing and reevaluating their risk financing programs to ensure they have adequate protection for property, business interruption, workers compensation, general liability and cyber losses.
The report also encouraged businesses to effectively model their terrorism risk and to build and test robust crisis management and business continuity plans.
