Be Prepared with a Disaster Recovery Plan

Citizens National Bank hosted a Cybersecurity Seminar for some of our customers earlier this year. The event featured a panel discussion by local cybersecurity experts including Ty Wittenburg of Rea & Associates, Dave Rees and Perry Carfagna of Perry ProTech, and Andy Knippen of Citizens National Bank. While online security is important for everyone, a breach can be especially detrimental to a business – causing a potential loss of thousands of dollars, loss of business due to downtime, and a loss of trust by customers. Panelists discussed the importance of having a disaster recovery plan in place and what that should include. “You’re gambling with your business if you don’t have a business continuity plan,” states Wittenburg. Rees concurs and encourages businesses to not only have an internal plan that they test but also to engage specialists, such as insurance agents and audit firms. “You don’t have to be the expert,” he says. According to the panel, here are a few things you should consider when developing your disaster recovery plan:

• Should an incident occur, have your call plan in place. Contact your IT provider first, your insurance company second, and then others who need to know.
• Have a detailed IT asset list, including serial numbers and locations of the equipment.
• Review your cyber insurance policy annually and understand any requirements for claims.
• Have a policy in place regarding how often to change passwords and the required use of multi-factor authentication. Encourage the use of passphrases or sentences versus words. They’re harder to hack.
• Look at end-point protection. Switch vendors if they’re not offering the latest available.
• Perform security scanning and vulnerability testing.
• Encrypt your backups and have them replicate to an off-site data center.
• Train your employees continuously.

Knippen discussed the importance of having a training plan for your employees to help them spot red flags and prevent clicking on links within emails that can lead to malware or providing login credentials. The bank uses KnowBe4 to train its employees, and now as an added benefit, we can offer it free of charge to our customers. If you’re interested in enrolling in this easy-to-use online program and aiding your employees in becoming more aware of possible scams that could hurt your business, contact us today – info@cnbohio.com.