A recent survey by Willis Towers Watson showed that 54 per cent of organisations believe that HR must take a lead on IT security in the workplace.
The survey - How Boards Can Lead the Cyber Resilient Organisation - consisted of respondents from 452 global companies and showed that 66 per cent were of the opinion that HR and security departments held the answer to fighting cyber crime.
Anthony Dagostino - Global Head of Cyber Risk with Willis Towers Watson - said:
“These findings are encouraging because they signal that more organisations are involving their HR function in addressing cyber risk. Organisations need greater collaboration between their chief human resources officers and information security officers to truly assess the organisational cultures driving cyber risk in the first instance.”
HR professionals - as keepers of data on employees - have an immense responsibility to store personal information safely and to ensure that all staff follows procedures rigorously to reduce the risk of data breaches caused by employee error. Ascertaining that workers only have access to the data they need to do their job can help to safeguard sensitive information.
Training staff on the latest breaches of security; changes to the Data Protection Bill; the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and phishing scams can encourage good habits and procedures.
Head of Solutions Delivery and IT at the British Standard Institute, Stephen Bowe, stated that businesses should provide training and education to increase awareness of data security challenges among staff. He said:
“Different organisations are at different stages of their digital journey, and as the pace of IT innovation and digital transformation continues to quicken, there are inconsistencies in how prepared organisations are in the event of a cyber-attack or a data loss incident. Data is as important to public services as personnel and physical infrastructures, and everyone has a responsibility to protect it.”
The survey found that 29 per cent of UK companies had experienced a serious cyber incident in the last year and 18 per cent of these companies believe they will suffer an incident in the next 12 months.
In addition, a report published by the British Standard Institute’s Cybersecurity and Information Resilience centre and GovNewsDirect, stated that 77 per cent of UK public sector organisations had experienced a cyber security breach in the last year and 32 per cent of these breaches were caused by staff error.
Anthony Dagostino remarked:
“The solution isn’t always more security awareness training. It could be a leadership or incentives and rewards issue, things that fall squarely within the function of the chief HR officer.”
