One of the fallouts of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic is that many people are still working from home.
What was supposed to be a temporary situation has become permanent for many people and while working from home might have its advantages, it also has numerous security risks.
The number of cyber security incidents in the world doubled in 2020 and numerous organizations fell victim to them.
From viruses to ransomwares, nefarious characters on the internet decided to take advantage of a bad situation and make it even worse.
So what is the role of a Business Analyst in the organization’s security ?
The business analyst is responsible for identifying business needs and providing solutions to those needs.
In order to perform their jobs they have to be members of the development team and as members of this team, they might have access to sensitive applications.
So they have to be aware of the responsibilities that come with having these access rights.
Cyber attacks can be crippling to an organization, it can put a stop to the organization’s business operations, cause them money and make them liable for lawsuits.
Due to these reasons and other problems related to a security incident, it is very important that the business analyst is aware of their role in security.
They need to have some basic understanding of cybersecurity to help protect themselves and the organization from any attack.
Standard organizations have regular security training, and the business analyst should take part in these trainings to become aware of the current cyber security risks.
But why does the Business Analyst have to be aware of current cyber security risks ?
Here are some of the reasons why the business analyst needs to have cyber security training
- Everyone Can Be Hacked: technology has grown so much in the last 30 years. To the point that everyone has some form of computer that they use on a daily basis.
From cell phones to machinery, almost every piece of equipment is integrated with computers but this makes them vulnerable to hackers.
Technology is one of the most important tools that a Business Analyst uses to perform their work. So they have to be aware of what security precautions that they have to take to prevent unsavory characters from taking advantage of them and using them to access the organization’s databases.
2. Organizations have sensitive data: no matter how much organizations might try to limit the amount of sensitive data that they store on their databases, they need to store some form of sensitive data to complete their business processes.
From employee payroll information to vendor payment information, the organization needs to store some information to perform their business operations.
If these information is unlawfully accessed, it could impact numerous people and other organizations which could have disastrous effects.
3. A Cyber Security incident can severely impact the organization: while organizations have data recovery (DR) plans and analyze their risk exposure on a regular basis, preventing a risk is always better that fixing it.
While having updated DR plans are always a good idea, a cyber attack such as a ransomware can also impact these plans and prevent the organization from accessing them and so what do you then ?
Many organizations have fallen victim to ransomwares and while they might have recovered from it, the resulting law suits from their customers might end up bankrupting them.
So it is very important that these attacks are prevented.