BARBADIAN BUSINESSES AND individuals are still not paying enough attention to cyber security, even in light of local and regional security breaches and reported unauthorised withdrawals from automatic teller machines.
This is the view of chief executive officer of the Caribbean Cyber Security Centre James Bynoe, who said he often feels like his organization is the lone voice in the wilderness.
“I think that unfortunately we have a long way to go,” he said in a recent interview with the NATION.
“Fighting cybercrime takes the active involvement of multiple stakeholders. The government plays a role, the media plays a role, businesses play a role and individual home users and families play a role, so it’s not something just one organisation owns.
“Our outreach and advocacy efforts are designed to shake and wake up the community to being proactive about this threat,” he said.
Bynoe said the Centre was committed to working with all stakeholders to ensure information in the region was secured.
He was speaking ahead of a workshop to be held on Friday at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus on how to protect information systems from cyber criminals and hackers. A similar event was held in Barbados in February and there are plans to take the sessions throughout the region.
The Centre’s chief technology officer Deon Olton said the workshop would not be a technical one.
“Anybody who has a business, who has data, who is a custodian of customer information and customer records, who has health information on their clients should come out to the workshop because it’s all about understanding the risks.
“It’s all about understanding the implications of a breach and how much it can cost your company . . . , he said.
Olton also stressed that cyber security in organization was not strictly a matter for information technology departments.
“All the different management levels within an organization are stakeholders in the whole problem because it is not an IT problem.
“If there isn’t adequate training and awareness being given to your internal staff, then your IT team could put the best solution in place but if something bypasses the security measures that they have in place and pop up on a user’s computer and they click on a link . . . it can bring down your entire network,” he said.
Bynoe said investments in information security could save money in the future.