Fraudulent Transactions Can Destroy Your Client’s Brand!

Is there something you can be doing to help them?

“Fraudulent transactions… are rippling across financial institutions and, in some cases, draining cash from customer bank accounts,…” This is bad news for Home Depot…as reported in this week’s WSJ.

Look over the past several months. Things are getting worse out there.  Yet many business executives are still ignorant of their exposure.  IT organizations aren’t addressing this issue. Who can?

And if you’re waiting on chip and pin technology or new compliance laws to improve things – don’t hold your breath. Compliance does not equal security and chip & pin is an October 2015 thing. It might help, but security issues aren’t going away.

The diagram below summarizes some of what’s going on – thanks to SRC for providing this!  A recent post on their site reports  a “782% increase in cyber incidents from 2006-2012 (Source – The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team).” Note: SRC Cyber exist to “Mitigate the risk of a cyber breach and circumvent the harm one could cause.”

What Can You Do?

It’s time to put more focus on security. But not the product. This is an opportunity for education and consulting. Followed by strategic projects. It’s an open door to really help clients. And it’s worth a lot of money to be that person.

Last week I spoke to CIOs in the DC area. They came because they know something bad is happening.  And they don’t really understand it. Security is complicated.

This event was sponsored by The Teneo Group, a security consulting firm and reseller of Check Point Products.

They invited clients and prospects to learn more about the trends and what business leaders should to be thinking about as they migrate to cloud applications, BYOD, and other transformational technologies to grow their business.

What Executives Need

Unlike many lunch events – The Teneo Group didn’t make this a technical meeting. They targeted business leaders including CIOs and CFOs. Their goal: to equip these leaders for the future of Data Security.

My presentation focused on major threats to expect over the coming 12 to 18 months.  Certainly cyber threats such DOS from ISIS will be one of them.  Another is the constant drain of intellectual capital from the innovators of this country. WSJ recently called this, “The biggest transfer of wealth in History.”

I showed them one of the biggest mistakes businesses are making in security; the inability to detect and respond to an incident in real time. It’s a lack of realtime intelligence. It took Home Depot 5 months, and it was the bank, not IT, who figured out something was going very wrong!

Finally I gave them 7 things to change – 7 things to build into their security program.

A Different Kind of Assessment Is Needed

The Teneo Group generously offered to provide a targeted assessment to measure likelihood of an attack for these companies. Most companies in the mid market probably do assessments.  But most are focusing on the wrong things. As companies move toward cloud and BYOD (just to name two big trends right now), assessments of a different flavor are needed. Just about every attendee agreed to take this next step – I expect The Teneo Group will be busy this fall!

What can you do to educate your clients on security? Do they know what the likelihood is that they’ll be a victim? Probably not. Most are just focusing on the meaningless compliance regulations being handed out by PCI and government officials.  This is not security.

There’s an opportunity here for those who are ready to do something new. An opportunity to provide some real value, and an opportunity to grow your business in a direction that is in increasingly high demand.  But you can’t just do it. It requires some ramp up. Wait, and you’ll be leaving a lot of business on the table – and perhaps watching you clients move to providers who can.

© 2014, David Stelzl

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