As a CFO or FD, you will have studied for the professional qualifications that enable you to take responsibility for a range of corporate governance issues. Cyber security is likely not one of them. Whilst you are expected to ensure that your business will be able to serve customers, invoice and collect cash after having been hacked – you may feel ill equipped to do so.
If this leaves you feeling a bit uncomfortable – we’d suggest that there are three possible responses.
1. You could hope that “it might not be you” and buy a lottery ticket to balance the risk. Note that you may not be able to rely on cyber insurance. It is becoming very expensive, and policies are covered in get- out clauses that require you to have taken all reasonable steps to mitigate the risk. Claims are being refused on the basis that software was not correctly configured.
- Are you able to assess the capability of your most senior IT resource? Do you know what good looks like?
- The kind of IT resource in whom you might have complete confidence is often more expensive than you might want to afford.
- Even if you can get your head around the money - the right kind of IT resource generally doesn’t stay in IT leadership roles focussed on run/sustain rather than build/transform in nature. Retention is a real problem
- What their technology vendors say. Technology vendors don’t love making explicit recommendations about which Partner a customer should work with because of the implied liability that might flow from doing so. Instead, they run accreditation programs. Most Partners don’t love accreditation programs because they requires them to get people formally trained, which takes their people off chargeable work. As a result, they do the minimum training that is necessary. TSG thinks differently: our team is fully certified.
- What their customers say. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We ask our customers what they think – and are proud of what they say. Our NPS score is +90. If you are unfamiliar with NPS as a methodology – we ask our customers how likely they are to recommend us. A score of -100 means that nobody would. A score of +100 means everyone is very likely to. The industry average is +30. +90 is outstanding.
- Standards. ISO 27001 is the gold standard for systems and data security. TSG is ISO 27001 certified.
How TSG Can Help
Our team is made up of senior consulting resources who can recommend what next steps you need to take to improve your cyber preparedness – and specialists who use tools to constantly monitor your system. If you are feeling exposed – please get in touch.
