It doesn’t matter which industry you work in or how large your business is: every company with a desire to stay competitive and relevant needs a cybersecurity risk management plan. New information technology comes online at a breakneck speed, making our business transactions and processes easier, smoother and faster.

2020 was a landmark year for data breaches. This year will likely be no different. More than 8 billion records were exposed in just the first quarter, a 273 percent jump over the same period from 2019. By the end of Q3 2020, a staggering 36 billion records had been exposed. By end of the year, data breaches had struck high-profile organizations including SolarWinds, Facebook, Microsoft, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Cyberattackers and hackers try to exploit security vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to enterprise networks. Their intentions typically include installing malware, stealing sensitive data, launching supply chain attacks, or engaging in cyber extortion or espionage.

Global cyberattacks increased by 29 percent in the first half of 2021 compared to 2020, and we can assume that cybercriminals and hackers won’t stop their malware and ransomware attacks any time soon. A strong cybersecurity strategy is vital to reduce losses from those attacks, and a robust incident response plan should be a part of that strategy.

All organizations rely on vendors to function in today’s dynamic landscape while achieving peak operational efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and economies of scale. A growing third-party network can yield significant benefits for organizations — but it also results in greater risk.

According to a Pew survey in 2019, 70 percent of American adults believed at the time that their data was less secure than it had been five years prior. Now consider that a pandemic followed, along with major data breaches at the likes of Microsoft and others. One can safely assume Americans are even less confident about the security of their data today.

Remediation and mitigation are words commonly used interchangeably to describe a wide variety of risk management measures within an organization or project. They are, however, distinct concepts under enterprise risk management (ERM) principles, with particular relevance for safeguarding the organization and its stakeholders. Remediation activities focus on fixing a problem to avoid or prevent the arrival of a risk.

Protecting your business against a cyberattack means diligently monitoring for activity that could indicate an attack is in progress or has already occurred. Locating these pieces of forensic data (such as data found in system log entries or files) ultimately helps you identify potentially malicious activity on your system or network.

The rapid pace of technological progress has let companies around the world benefit from operational improvements that lower costs. This progress, however, also brings risks that companies must take into account to protect their stakeholders. Cyber-threats are executed by cybercriminals using various means to gain access to an organization’s digital infrastructure.

Every organization needs strong internal controls to ensure the integrity of financial statements and to promote ethical values and transparency across the enterprise. Internal controls are the mechanism to do those things; controls help to identify risks and then reduce them to an acceptable level.