Why your business needs to boost cyber security now
By Peter Bangs
Every day your real estate or construction company becomes a more tempting target for cyber attackers.
The rewards that appeal to cyber criminals include proprietary information such as proposals, engineering drawings and building designs; intellectual property such as design rights; financial information; personal identifiable information of customers and vendors; email accounts; ransom of files for money and much more. Cyber criminals are motivated not only by money, but also by espionage, extortion and even simple notoriety.
For real estate and construction companies, protecting operations, assets and people calls for effective cyber defences. Industry insiders refer to this as establishing a “strong security posture” and it necessitates adopting a proactive enterprise risk management approach to mitigate the most dangerous risks.
The size of an enterprise does not matter. Nearly half of all cyber attacks globally are committed against small businesses. Small- to mid-sized real estate and construction companies are seeing more cyber attacks for one simple reason: inadequate defences.
The failure to detect and respond to security incidents could cause severe impact to the reputation of the industry and can lead to more than just theft of data. It can also result in physical harm, safety issues or operational interruption.
Every real estate and construction company needs a comprehensive, dynamic enterprise risk management approach to security that focuses on identifying and mitigating the likeliest and most dangerous risks to protect vital operations, assets, infrastructure and people.
Protecting your company from cyber catastrophe first requires acknowledging a damaging cyber breach can happen to your organization. Then it requires building a strong security posture. MNP ‘s industry-leading Cyber Security and Real Estate and Construction teams work together to develop a tailored approach to address your Cyber Security needs.
Contact Peter Bangs, CPA, CA, Leader of MNP’s Real Estate and Construction practice for Eastern Ontario at 613.691.4212 or peter.bangs@mnp.ca
Trending Now
The OBoT Perspective
