In this newsletter, we are sharing content with a specific focus on Cybersecurity. As this has become a major topic of conversation, we hope you become more aware of the risks and the steps that you and your organization can take to prevent this type of attack.

In April 2019, JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, made a bold claim – “The biggest threat to the U.S. financial system is a failure to defend American electronic networks, online control systems and computers from relentless cyber attacks.” According to the Identity Theft Resource Center and Cyber Scout, cyberattacks cost the global economy $600 billion in 2018. Further, research firm Gartner reports that firms will spend more than $1 trillion on Cybersecurity products between 2017 – 2021.

For the accounting profession, this issue recently hit close to home. In July, the QuickBooks cloud hosting firm iNSYNQ was hit with a ransomware attack. The attack shut down its network and left customers unable to access their accounting data. According to Krebs on Security, the attack impacted data belonging to certain iNSYNQ clients, rendering such data inaccessible. Elliot Luchansky, CEO of iNSYNQ, stated, “You know as well as we that no one is 100% impervious to this – businesses large and small, governments and individuals are susceptible. iNSYNQ and our customers were the victims of a malware attack that’s a totally new variant that hadn’t been detected before, confirmed by the experienced and knowledgeable cybersecurity team we’ve employed.”

At DecisionCFO, we actively seek to dispel the notion that organizations are entirely defenseless against cyberattacks. By improving awareness (see our 6 Steps to Improving Cybersecurity Awareness), we hope to augment the conversation for identifying and mitigating these risks.