Corporate Cyber Security: A CFO duty

Bhavesh Khanvilkar | Last updated: 15 June 2020

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Quick Summary

Cyber threats pose a significant risk to businesses, with recent incidents highlighting the ease with which individuals and companies can fall victim to fraud. As organisations increasingly rely on digital infrastructure and remote working, the potential for cyber attacks has escalated dramatically. CFOs, acting as de facto risk officers, must proactively analyse these threats and develop robust cyber-security plans to safeguard company operations and data.

This week one of my friends called me and informed me that Rs. 10,000 was robbed from her bank account due to Cyber fraud, another friend called me and shared his experience, how he received a fraudulent call when he was working form home and tried to get access to company's server and database. This experience has scared and alerted me that this can happen with me and with anyone at any point in time.

Especially for the organisation, cyber threats are tremendous.

CFO s Cyber Security Duty: Protect Your Business

This kind of cyber attacks can cripple a company's operation and even threaten its very existence. As a company's de facto risk officer, CFO s must have to analyse the cyber threats and have to come up with the cyber-security plan as during these pandemic days where everyone is working from home, the threats have multiplied massively.

India is not only emerging as a top country in COVID 19 cases but also as the third-biggest target for cyber attacks after USA and China. Now the world will become more digitized hence these threats will endanger not only result in commercial losses but creates a lot of legal issues.

Hence CFO, CIOs in the company has to collaboratively plan out in advance how the company will respond to these cyber breaches.

Now more and more employees are working and will be working from home, Hackers are shifting their targets, from corporate networks to corporate individuals, so the organization has to develop training and awareness programmes amongst the employees.

It's really an action time to seriously plan out and take action, as hackers have already decided their strategies and armed themselves with most sophisticated tools.

Hence, let's get into action corporate superheroes and stop these cybercriminals.

FAQ :

CFOs are considered the de facto risk officers within a company, making them responsible for analysing cyber threats and developing cyber-security plans to protect the organisation.

The pandemic, with its increase in remote working, has massively multiplied cyber threats, as hackers shift their targets from corporate networks to individual employees.

Cyber attacks can cripple a company's operations, lead to commercial losses, and create significant legal issues, potentially threatening the very existence of the business.

Companies, led by their CFOs and CIOs, should collaboratively plan their response to cyber breaches, develop training and awareness programmes for employees, and take serious action to counter sophisticated cybercriminal strategies.

Yes, India is emerging as the third-biggest target for cyber attacks globally, following the USA and China.