Cybersecurity for Accounting & Finance Leaders – Embark Partner Blog

The Good Stuff: IT & Security Teams Can Provide a Powerful Defense

Embark knows that you aren’t reading this to terrify yourself over the countless sources of digital danger and thievery lurking in the binary shadows. So on that note, we offer you some useful best practices that can help you form a powerful cybersecurity defense, beginning with your IT and security teams as well as individual employees throughout all levels of your enterprise. After all, comprehensive, effective cybersecurity is the epitome of a team effort, so getting everyone involved will always be an essential first step. That said, accounting and finance leaders must educate their people on the following items on a continual basis, ensuring they are always at the forefront of the dynamic, ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape:

• Always train and retrain team members on identifying any suspicious activity. Employees play a critical role in the overall security of an organization. Most of the cyberattacks experienced by companies every year are indirectly caused by a lack of broad internal awareness and understanding of good security practices.
• Identify, isolate, and protect the enterprise's most sensitive data, especially when impacted by compliance regulations. Compliance doesn’t always mean you are secure, but it should be an outcome of your security best practices. Immediately implement security patches once they're available to minimize vulnerability. Don’t suck at patching. It is one of the easiest ways to protect your organization, as well as one of the easiest ways for threat actors to gain access into your organization.
• Utilize encryption to protect both data throughput and storage.
• Monitor and actively manage access to any cloud services.
• Implement digital security measures like firewalls, malware protection, and system intrusion detection to build a digital moat around your environment.
• Mandate a signed acknowledgment of security policies and procedures, quizzing team members on those policies to ensure a thorough understanding of the material and the stakes at hand.
• Concerning BYOD policies, ensure that you have a team huddle to evaluate whether or not the financial cost savings and convenience outweigh your cybersecurity risk. Sometimes it’s necessary for a BYOD team huddle. Implementing the right controls is essential. It’s all about transparency.
  • Educate and train individuals on the same topics while also requiring significant password integrity, multifactor authentication, and restriction on the types of data that can be stored on personal devices. This will limit the level of personal device users to those with basic security competency/best-practice knowledge, regulation of public Wi-Fi hotspot use, and links or attachments from unknown senders. These practices will help build a secure culture within your organization.

If any of this elicits the reaction of “This sounds great but where do I start?” having a cybersecurity-as-a-service partner can come into play here. Extend your security team without having to build your own, purchase the necessary technology tools, or employ personnel to monitor and respond to incidents 24/7/365 days a year.

More Good Stuff: How CFOs Can Mitigate Cyber Risk

Needless to say, leadership plays a crucial role in an organization’s cybersecurity effectiveness. While the previous best practices apply in general to accounting and finance leaders within an enterprise, the following tips are especially pertinent to CFOs as they embrace the absolute importance of cybersecurity and, particularly concerning technology, view security solutions as a source of added value.

• Fully understand the risk: Your cybersecurity practices should be a business enabler, not a deterrent. Intimately understanding the differences between a security risk and a business risk is key. While we're not suggesting CFOs must entirely understand the technical intricacies of risk management in the digital environment, understanding and calculating the possible impact to your assets and reputations—as well as the different types of vulnerabilities and attackers on the prowl—will reveal the severity of the issue and provide sufficient motivation to act accordingly.
• Communication and coordination: CFOs are equal parts quarterback and offensive coordinator within an enterprise. Their view from the top allows them to see relative logistical deficiencies/surpluses among all business units. Knowing where to tap the needed talent and other resources if one business unit requires them versus another, they should leverage that unique perspective and position to both communicate and coordinate a security-focused strategy across multiple departments within the organization.
• Cybersecurity budgeting: Perhaps the most obvious data security best practice for a CFO, sufficient attention should be placed towards the most efficient and effective use of the enterprise's resources towards technology solutions and training. Here, the CFO should be striving to continually protect the organization within an incredibly dynamic cybersecurity environment.

As overwhelming as some of this might sound, Embark assures you that a deliberate and organized approach to your enterprise's cybersecurity procedures and practices will go a long way in protecting operations, stakeholders, and everyone else involved. First and foremost, adopt a structured and measured strategy in your cybersecurity, particularly with respect to your internal controls, and build your environment around it.