Secure Board Communication and Cybersecurity Best Practices

Effective communication between directors is essential to ensure directors make informed decisions and are fully engaged. Boards must face the challenge of finding a balance between the need to effectively communicate as well as the need to protect sensitive information from cyberattacks.

Boards must use secure collaboration tools like board portals and messaging platforms in real-time to keep discussions, sensitive documents and other data private. This is becoming more important as more businesses are impacted by breaches and hacks, and regulators adopt new security standards.

Security experts from the field say it’s not a matter of “if” rather “when” an organization is likely to be affected by a data breach. A successful cybersecurity framework includes an excellent board relationship with the chief information security officer (CISO). CISOs should take advantage of every opportunity to communicate their vision https://www.boardroomsolutions.org and strategy to the board and gain the board’s support to provide more effective responses to cyberattacks.

Many board members and governance experts use their personal email accounts to send internal communications, particularly during virtual meetings. This puts organizations at risk for phishing attacks and other cyberattacks targeting prominent individuals such as directors, C-level executives, and other high-ranking management personnel.

It is critical to provide training to your board members on the importance of using cybersecurity best practices. This should include a discussion of the kinds of data they share on insecure channels, including meeting minutes and even informal communications. It is also crucial to make use of a secure document sharing platform that has encryption as well as access controls in order to avoid documents being copied or downloaded from third parties.