The Critical Role of Cybersecurity in Operational Strategy for Nonprofits
It is no longer shocking news to declare that cyberattacks are rising across every industry and with businesses of all sizes. Just in the first quarter of 2024’s, Blackberry identified three million cyberattacks, which is more than 37,000 cyberattacks daily on average. That research is just from one company alone; many more threats are wreaking havoc across society. Most notable, a hacking group recently claimed that they stole social security numbers from 2.7 billion people, including every American.
This increasing risk is understandably making Chief Operating Officers (COO) concerned about their operational sustainability, especially when their limited resources and sensitive data make them attractive targets for bad actors.
The need for data protection is becoming more pressing than ever. Proactive IT management is the key to achieving that goal and fostering robust cybersecurity. Below, we discuss the importance of prioritizing cybersecurity and outline clear steps for COOs to safeguard their digital assets to ensure business continuity.
Why Cybersecurity is Crucial for Nonprofits
Nonprofits have communities that depend on them. They provide critical services to their beneficiaries for their well-being and quality of life.
That’s why cybersecurity threats can profoundly impact these organizations. Beyond the potentially irrevocable damage to community trust, if they can’t access the IT infrastructure that underpins their activities, that may disrupt their services and ability to continue their mission. Recovering from a data breach or other attack can also strain already tight budgets and prevent the organization from delivering its programs.
Taking action to prevent these outcomes should be a top priority, especially if your organization conducts e-commerce online or stores personally identifiable information in the cloud. When your organization proactively implements a zero-trust cybersecurity framework and advanced security measures, you can prevent unauthorized access to your data, minimize downtime, and reduce unexpected expenses to direct funds toward your core objectives.
The Proactive Role of COOs in Enhancing Cybersecurity
As the person in charge of your organization’s operations, the Chief Operating Officer oversees strategic planning and its execution during the day-to-day workflow. They work to develop an environment that keeps their team performing optimally, equipped with the capabilities to match their activities with the organization’s long-term vision. In a nutshell, their job is all about organizational resilience.
As part of achieving that goal, they are responsible for ensuring that your operations don’t compromise your security and vice versa. This will require proactively approaching risk management at an organizational level — identifying weaknesses and then implementing measures across departments that defend your data holistically. The COO will likely be involved in procuring new technologies and supervising regular compliance reviews to confirm your infrastructure aligns with internal and external government standards.
However, in one study, 78% of COOs reported that they are responsible for securing operational processes, but lack training and experience in doing so. The task is especially getting harder as organizational IT infrastructures grow and expand the potential attack surface for cybercriminals. They must also balance these responsibilities with their other duties, which can be challenging. In many cases, they would benefit from working with a managed IT services provider to achieve operational stability.
Best Practices for Integrating Cybersecurity into Operations
Now that you understand the critical role of COOs in cybersecurity, it’s time to learn the practical steps for integrating cybersecurity into your operations.
Conduct a risk assessment
Creating operational sustainability with your technology will require a strategic approach that begins with a thorough risk assessment. This will help you understand your organization’s specific vulnerabilities and prioritize cybersecurity measures that address them. Start by assessing how much a cyber incident would impact your assets, resources, and workflows.
Develop a cybersecurity strategy
Once you’ve mapped out the risks, create a comprehensive strategy that aligns your cybersecurity needs with your operational goals. You should include clear policies, procedures, and protocols for handling your technology and data, outlining how cybersecurity will be embedded into the day-to-day work environment.
Focus on incident response planning
Your cybersecurity strategy should involve developing a detailed incident response plan that prepares your entire team to effectively identify and address cybersecurity incidents. This allows you to minimize any damage.
In advance, you can:
- Document the roles and responsibilities around communicating an issue to relevant stakeholders
- Develop detailed procedures that explain how to contain and eradicate incidents
- Create an inventory of your assets
- Prepare playbooks for dealing with various scenarios
- Conduct regular crisis simulation drills where the team can get hands-on, experiential learning and test your plan
Implement advanced protection solutions
It is critical for organizations to focus on the future when it comes to cybersecurity. Building a proactive IT infrastructure will involve implementing various technologies.
Examples include:
- Continuous monitoring and maintenance, ideally through a 24/7 security operations center that can leverage artificial intelligence to detect intrusions in real time and address them swiftly
- Strong identity management, including introducing robust authentication mechanisms like single-sign-on passwords and strict access controls and permissions for your infrastructure’s users.
- Endpoint and Server Protection, which focuses on protecting your servers and workstations safe from malware using antivirus software, firewalls and other solutions.
Provide cybersecurity awareness training
Sophisticated tools will not protect you from threats alone. Research points to human error as a significant factor in cybersecurity incidents, with employee mistakes likely being the cause 88-95% of the time.
You need to equip your employees with the necessary skills for recognizing and preventing potential threats, such as avoiding becoming victims of social engineering attacks and understanding the importance of safe online behaviors. When our company provided thorough training to an organization’s staff, we observed that they were able to improve security by their employees reliably following process and governance expectations.
Outsource your IT to a managed IT services provider
Hiring external IT professionals can strengthen your organization’s cybersecurity posture without diverting internal resources from important initiatives. These experts live and breathe IT, meaning they also have the specialized knowledge to maintain protection.
Before partnering with our team, a local association relied on on-premises systems for their email, website, and management tools. That means they dealt with constant vulnerabilities in their infrastructure and regular severe outages that cut off access to their data and infrastructure, grinding their operations to a halt. As skilled IT professionals, we helped them shift to a secure cloud environment and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery and data backup plan, which allowed the organization to have a more stress-free technology experience.
Secure your nonprofit with designDATA’s support
In our digital business environment, efficient operational performance in a nonprofit is only possible with a secure and dependable IT infrastructure.
Chief Operating Officers should proactively build their organization’s capacity to both respond and prevent incidents from threatening their mission. You do not have to cultivate this organizational resilience on your own: when you work with designDATA, we offer comprehensive IT managed services that create a well-functioning technological foundation for your operations. Paired with our cybersecurity solutions, you can have peace of mind that your data remains protected and your ability to make a difference isn’t compromised.
Contact designDATA today to explore how we can help your organization enhance its cybersecurity measures and strengthen operational sustainability.
