23 February 2016

IMA /ACCA : Does your finance function have a plan to fail?

Cybersecurity is growing too dangerous and powerful to ignore and a head-in-the-sand attitude to this once nascent, now pervasive threat is no longer an option, according to a new study by IMA and ACCA.

The joint study, 'Cybersecurity – Fighting Crime’s Enfant Terrible,' is an assessment of the cyber-threat landscape across the globe, tracks current and future Cybersecurity trends and highlights particular areas that are likely to have a direct impact on the future of the accountancy profession.

'Exploitation of the myriad weaknesses within Cybersecurity is now being perpetrated by a rogues gallery of hostile nation states, digitally enabled terrorists, conniving competitors, organised crime syndicates, hacktivists and even the odd disgruntled employee,' said Faye Chua, ACCA’s head of business insights. [...]

Raef Lawson, Vice President of Research and Policy at IMA added:

'When establishing a plan it is important to be realistic about the resources at your disposal so you can deploy them appropriately. To be effective, implement a ‘layered’ approach to Cybersecurity that establishes priorities for your most valuable digital resources.'

Amid escalating cybercrime episodes across the globe, the criminal enterprise is presenting a number of threats for the finance profession – and the theft of financial assets through cyber-intrusions is the second largest source of direct loss from cybercrime, according to one study noted in the report.

Accountants and finance professionals can, and should, play a leading role in defining key areas of a strategic approach to mitigating cybercrime risks. These include:

• Creating reasonable estimates of financial impact that different types of Cybersecurity breaches will cause, so that a business can be realistic about its ability to respond to an attack and/or recover from it;
• Defining risk management strategy;
• Helping businesses to establish priorities for their most valuable digital resources, in order to implement a “layered” approach to Cybersecurity.
• Closely following the work of government and various regulators, in order to have clear, up-to-date information on adequate legislation and on requirements for adequate disclosure and prompt investigation of Cybersecurity breaches.

'Predicting the potential implications of a breach is crucial to enabling a swift recovery should the unthinkable occur. Putting a ‘plan for failure’ in place might feel like an admission of weakness, but it is the best way to accelerate the process of repair after an incident,' Faye Chua said. [...]

Full report

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