Any role that sits within or just shy of the c-suite now requires a leader who has the ability to engage with the whole business and the days of a CFO, CISO, CIO or CTO being data-driven are numbered.
All four leaders are now required to influence and change mindset across the whole business but while they must work with their workforce, they also need to involve each other in their decision-making processes to solve finance-related Cyber Security matters caused by the growth of data and pertinent threat of attack.
Financial Leaders must understand what precautions to take when doing their day-to-day role as the majority of external cyber-attacks are motivated by financial gain and while they do not need to be fluent in information security – they must understand how to limit risk and prevent internal breaches.
Some of the most-common data breaches are caused by human error such as storing financial data in an unsecured location, sending a sensitive email to the wrong recipient and keeping essential information such as payroll in an open folder accessible to the whole workforce.
If this workforce is not educated in how they can individually evade danger by simple things like locking their desktop or ignoring and reporting suspicious emails then the breach is essentially in the hands of the CFO and their failure to limit the risk of making that file accessible.
Finance Leaders should be actively approaching their security teams or providers asking them for advice on how they store, access and share financial data.
But, for three specific questions to ask your security teams as a leader of Finance I would ask the following:
1) Would you be able to tell if someone had accessed, moved or deleted your data and how is this monitored?
2) Do you have an authorised list of people who can access your financial statements and can you see if anyone else has accessed them?
3) Do you have a budget allocated for the security of your financial documents or intellectual property?
For more advice on how to approach the topic of Cyber Security as a leader of finance please get in touch but in the meantime, join the conversation.
Do you know what you should be asking your Cyber Security Teams/providers?
