Ransomware attacks and data breaches have taken over the news cycle recently, putting executives and the C-suite in the spotlight as primary targets and victims. As a CEO, it’s important to understand that all too often these cyber attacks are the direct result of corporate credential exposures of lower-level employees. For example, the Colonial Pipeline was breached using an exposed employee credential, not that of an executive. Nevertheless, nearly all industry digital protection services are designed to monitor only a select number of high-profile company employees, forcing security teams to choose which few individuals to safeguard.
It can be easy to forget the consequences that come with living and working in a highly digitalized world — meaning that risks increase as more and more employees engage with an interconnected suite of digital tools and services in today’s distributed virtual workplace. And with cyber threats continuing to grow and evolve, we as CEOs must ask ourselves, why isn’t there the same level of digital protection for employees below executives or the C-suite if they also have access to critical systems and sensitive data?