The SEC has squarely placed the onus on corporate board members to take on greater cybersecurity oversight of the companies they serve. NIC Inc.’s Jayne Friedland Holland discusses board members’ roles now.
Following the heels of record-breaking cyber breaches in 2017, sensitive information found its way into cybercriminals’ hands in dozens of major attacks in 2018. Identity theft protection company IdentityForce has already reported on close to 100 breaches in 2019 affecting health care, online betting, government, retail organizations and more. The cybersecurity community generally agrees that worldwide cybercrime costs will double from $3 trillion annually in 2015 to $6 trillion by 2021.
The 2017 attack on Equifax, that year’s largest and most well-publicized breach, exposed 145.5 million Americans’ social security, credit card and driver’s license numbers. The event was surprising not only in its breadth, but also because Equifax executives knowingly continued trading stock for months before the company reported the breach.
The uptick in devastating cybersecurity incidents and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s concerns over reporting delays prompted the agency to issue interpretive guidance for public company disclosures of cybersecurity risks and incidents in February 2018. The…
