Autumn is when most organizations plan for the coming year’s IT needs. No matter the size of your company or the products, services, and data you work with, this strategic annual planning is essential. It helps you set informed, realistic budgets, maintain cybersecurity, and make sure that your IT updates and other projects will support overall business goals.
Strategic planning should involve a full IT health checkup, because following up on the changes you made during the year will affect your cybersecurity levels, IT budget, and technical capabilities well into the future. This planning should also involve cybersecurity insurance—whether that’s looking into coverage or making sure you’re meeting the standards in your policy.
Why must every organization consider cybersecurity in annual planning?
No organization is exempt from security threats, so no organization can afford to overlook security. Even the smallest company has customer and partner data that can be exploited—the fact that you’re not collecting bank account numbers or personal health information doesn’t make you immune. In 2023, more than 94% of organizations reported email security incidents, with 35% of malware being delivered via email.
Bad actors are constantly on the lookout to collect information about how you interact with your customers and partners, whether to help them pose as one of your employees to launch a spear phishing campaign or social engineering attack, to access your systems for a ransomware attack, or to sell your data on the dark web.
You risk your business and your reputation if you are attacked. A ransomware incident can halt sales and/or operations for days, weeks, or months. If customer or partner data is misused, you risk losing their trust and their business. 2023 saw a 72% increase in data breaches since 2021, which held the previous all-time record.
How to get the most from cybersecurity insurance?
The good news: you can protect yourself with cyber insurance and solid security practices and now is a great time to assess your needs. Organizations should do security monitoring daily, and overall needs assessments throughout the year. But annual strategic planning is a great time to review the changes you’ve made to your infrastructure in depth. Then you can update your governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) practices accordingly.
What you’ll need to do:
Budget for cyber insurance. If you don’t already have it, cyber insurance is worth the investment, and just as important as having security software. A good cyber liability insurance policy can cover much of the cost if your business is the victim of a ransomware attack, data breach, phishing scam, computer virus, etc. These include your costs around lost business, investigating and fixing the issue, and providing credit monitoring for your customers if their data was compromised. You can also get coverage against lawsuits by customers or partners.
Choose the right policy. You’ll need to know your IT environment and be current on your GRC and security practices to apply for insurance, get adequate coverage, and adhere to policy standards. Questions you can expect to find on the policy questionnaire include:
- What security framework do you use to guide your security policies?
- Do you have an access control policy?
- How often is your backup policy reviewed?
- What method do you use to encrypt data in transit?
- Where can your incident response policy be found?
A good IT partner can help you assess your environment and fill out the cyber-insurance policy questionnaire.
Adhere to your cyber insurance requirements. After you have coverage, there are two important areas to consider during strategic planning:
- Assess the changes you made to your IT environment during the year and update accordingly. Any change, even getting a new hosting service for your website or adding a new publicly available service like ecommerce or APIs, can open security gaps. Does your insurance policy require that you offer multifactor authentication for each new online service? This is the time to check that you have this protection in place; if you don’t address these gaps, your insurance policy may not protect you. A knowledgeable IT partner can help you stay in good standing with your insurance company.
- Keep your IT solutions current. Insurers require that you install software updates and use current IT solutions. Using an outdated operating system or other application won’t save you money in the long run—when the makers stop releasing security updates, your cyber insurance policy likely will no longer pay for any claims.
Done right, strategic planning helps you transform your IT environment into an asset that supports your operations and your business goals. It’s your regular checkup to help you get the most from your IT initiatives, policies, and spending. On the other hand, failing to address some of IT elements, like your state of cybersecurity health and cyber insurance policies, could derail your company’s future.
Contact us today for a consultation. We can answer your cyber security questions.