October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Most of the cybersecurity conversations I hear start inside the organization. Are our employees trained? Is MFA turned on? Are our computers protected? Are our backups working? Those are all good questions. But there’s another question credit union leaders need to ask: What about everybody else who has access to our technology and information? Think …
How Would Your Credit Union Respond to a Ransomware Attack Tomorrow Morning?
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. So here’s a question I’d like every credit union CEO, COO, board member, and technology leader to think about: What would happen if your credit union was hit by ransomware tomorrow morning? Not theoretically. Tomorrow. It’s 8:07 a.m. Employees are arriving. Members are calling. Someone reports that files won’t open. A few minutes later, another …
Is MFA Enough? How Credit Unions Should Protect Employee Accounts and Microsoft 365
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and there’s one piece of cybersecurity advice almost every organization has heard: Turn on multi-factor authentication. That’s good advice. But I was talking with a business leader once who asked me: “Rusty, we have MFA. Doesn’t that pretty much protect us if somebody steals an employee’s password?” My answer was: It helps tremendously. But MFA …
Could One Employee Put Your Credit Union at Risk? How to Build a Human Firewall
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and you’ll probably hear a lot about passwords, multi-factor authentication, firewalls, ransomware, and security software. All of those things matter. But there’s another part of cybersecurity we can’t afford to overlook. People. I was talking with an organization once after an employee received an email that looked completely normal. It appeared to come from someone …
Why Do Quarterly Technology Reviews Matter More Than Annual IT Planning for Credit Unions?
I was sitting with a leadership team once reviewing their technology plan when somebody said: “Rusty, didn’t we just do this last year?” Technically, yes. We had built a good plan. We reviewed the budget. We talked about cybersecurity. We identified equipment that needed to be replaced. We discussed several projects for the coming year. Then life happened. A vendor …
Cybersecurity Awareness Month: 10 Questions Every Credit Union Should Ask About Its Cybersecurity Program
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. For credit unions, that’s a good reason to talk about cybersecurity. But here’s the thing. Cybersecurity can’t be something we think about for only 31 days. I was talking with a credit union executive once when she asked me: “Rusty, how do I know if we’re doing enough?” That’s probably one of the hardest cybersecurity …
Ransomware Recovery: What Should Every Ohio Credit Union Do Before an Attack?
I once asked a leadership team a question that changed the entire cybersecurity conversation. “If ransomware encrypted your systems tonight, how would you open tomorrow morning?” Everyone knew they had backups. They had cybersecurity tools. They had an insurance policy. But when we started talking about what would actually happen at 8:00 the next morning, the answers became less certain. …
Incident Response Planning: What Happens During the First 24 Hours of a Cyberattack?
“Rusty, what actually happens if we get hacked?” That’s one of the better cybersecurity questions a credit union executive can ask. Not: “Which firewall do we have?” Not: “How many security alerts did we get last month?” But what actually happens when something goes wrong? Imagine it’s 8:12 on a Monday morning. An employee calls the help desk because she …
Preparing Your Credit Union for the Next NCUA Examination: What Should Your Technology Team Review?
I was talking with a credit union executive once when she said something I’ve heard in different forms many times over the years. “Rusty, I don’t mind examinations. I just don’t like surprises.” I understood exactly what she meant. Nobody expects an examination to be fun. But there’s a big difference between walking into one knowing where your technology risks …
Microsoft 365 Security Best Practices for Ohio Credit Unions
I was talking with a credit union leader once when she said something I hear quite a bit. “Rusty, Microsoft takes care of the security, right?” My answer was: “Microsoft takes care of a lot of it. But not all of it.” And that distinction matters. Microsoft 365 gives credit unions access to powerful tools like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, …