{"id":94781,"date":"2021-06-15T13:49:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/?p=94781"},"modified":"2024-06-28T10:57:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T09:57:19","slug":"construction-cybersecurity-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/planning-construction-news\/construction-cybersecurity-plan\/94781\/","title":{"rendered":"Planning for a crisis: The importance of a construction cybersecurity plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tamara Higham, marketing executive at Viewpoint<\/a>, discusses the importance of integrating a cybersecurity plan into your construction business<\/h2>\n

The past twelve months have been challenging, but one positive lesson has been the importance of having a \u201cjust in case\u201d plan. (Remember the toilet paper roll and pasta saga of March 2020?) Although we may have learned the importance of planning the hard way \u2014 some of us now have toilet paper reserves for years \u2014 we do not often apply this same mindset to keeping our business data and infrastructure protected.<\/p>\n

To ensure your construction company can immediately get to the business of helping its community it\u2019s vital to have a meticulous crisis plan \u2014 and the right technology \u2014 in place. Remote working and unparalleled reliance on computers have left many construction companies vulnerable to cyberattacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Phishing scams, hackers, and wire transfer scams have been on the rise since March 2020. According to Deloitte,\u00a035% of ransomware and methods used on attacks<\/a>\u00a0were previously unseen before the pandemic, whilst police data analysed by Nexor shows that there was a 31% increase in security breach cases from May to June 2020.<\/p>\n

If burglaries were on the rise in a business park, the designated security company would increase its presence. However,\u00a0construction companies have yet to adopt a cybersecurity mindset<\/a>. If your data is compromised, so are your business workflows, your customers\u2019 data, and your reputation. We don\u2019t often think about how our operations would be affected should an outage or a phishing attack occur \u2014\u00a0but we should be.<\/p>\n

Creating an effective construction cybersecurity plan<\/h3>\n

No business wants to imagine being a victim of a security breach or severe data loss, but preparing for the worst puts your business in the best position moving forward, because you can act quickly and have more control of the outcome.<\/p>\n

The hardest part of creating a recovery plan is the first hurdle: deciding what needs to be included. This will vary from business to business, but there are factors that will remain the same for many.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve outlined some of the basic questions you need to ask in order to start forming an effective crisis plan \u2014 and surprisingly, it isn\u2019t all related to data.<\/p>\n