It’s been over 6 months since my last post, and frankly the time during Covid seems to pass at warp speed! I can’t believe I’m already thinking and planning for the summer! We are making progress in the fight against Covid, vaccines are rolling out, and schools are opening, which has got me thinking more about building my business again.

But overshadowed by my new optimism and all the headlines of the election, the storming of the Capitol and Covid, the last six months have been witness to the most active and destructive cyber security events in recent history. The depth and breadth of these attacks is staggering, with implications for our economy and government. We are in a new age of cyber risk for businesses, so we all need to get better prepared to manage and guide our organizations through these new challenges and new growth. Here is just a quick list of what you may have missed…

• SolarWinds supply chain hack, which affected 18k businesses and multiple government agencies including Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, the US Treasury Department, Department of Commerce and many others. This hack lead to the disclosure of untold sensitive and critical data to foreign adversaries and the loss of control of critical government and business networks.
• Microsoft Exchange hack leading to over 60,000 organizations having their email systems compromised and likely accessed by unauthorized users.
• Accelion supply chain hack, which lead to the compromise of thousands of high profile businesses and government agencies and the disclosure of personal, privileged and sensitive information around the globe.
• FireEye systems and data breach leading to disclosure of critical client information, which includes many Fortune 500 and government agencies and included the code to sophisticated testing and cyber espionage tools used by their offensive testing team.
• SITA systems and data breach exposing personal and sensitive information about airline riders from over a dozen airlines.
• BlackBaud systems and data breach compromising their systems and exposing sensitive information about donors and Not for Profits including healthcare systems, charities, universities and hospitals
• and so many more…

To help business owners and managers understand and address these new realities, I recently penned a blog post for Ihloom, Mantra Computing’s sister cyber security business, about a new set of business skills we call Cyber Wellbeing. Like many business owners and managers, I am comfortable reviewing my businesses financial wellbeing, knowing where our revenues are, expenses, inventory, sales pipelines, etc. But most business owners and managers have no idea what their current risks are of a debilitating cyber event. What are the costs of preventing a cyber event? What are the costs of being unprepared? Will my cyber insurance cover my losses and ensure continuity of business?

My colleagues and I will be blogging on the Ihloom site and sending out related communications to continue educating business owners and managers on the concepts of business Cyber Wellbeing. If this is something that’s of interest to you, please check out the post and subscribe to our mailing list.

Like many of you, I’m excited about a post Covid rebirth. However, successfully capitalizing on this new opportunity will require being prepared. As G.I. Joe used to remind me, “Knowing is half the battle!”