Companies, individuals must be on cybersecurity high alert

Do you use the Internet to access information, to communicate, to play games? Then you should be afraid, very afraid. That was the message broadcast clearly at the Providence Business News Cybersecurity Summit last week.

A panel of academic and industry experts, including two members of the R.I. Cybersecurity Commission, engaged in more than two hours of discussion about cybersecurity and then pointed attendees to ways to combat the increasing occurrence of data breaches, hacktivism, ransoming and the like.

With 87 percent of Americans using the Internet, security must be of paramount importance on both a personal and professional level. But it’s not really about technology so much as it is about people.

Across industries, chief information officers and their equivalents know the issues. But oftentimes the chief executives don’t make it a priority. The time has come for the message to come from the top down – if a company wants to survive and thrive in the 21st century, it needs to spend the time and manpower protecting its proprietary data, including that of its customers and vendors.

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Just as importantly, individuals need to pay attention to their own habits. One of the panelists said that an estimated 90 percent of security breaches at companies are caused by careless or untrained employees. Just one click on an email that is malicious can bring an entire company to its knees.

As scary as the session was, however, the message was also that there are things people and businesses can do to protect themselves. And the time to start doing them is now. •

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