Lawyer serves business owners a breakfast IT warning
RESPONSIBILTY for protecting business information assets should not be left solely to an IT provider, a Geelong lawyer told the Chamber of Commerce’s annual law breakfast yesterday.
Harwood Andrews principal lawyer Paul Gray said busi- ness owners and directors needed to better understand where information assets were stored and to be able to ask the right questions of their IT providers.
“Ensuring there is appropriate adequacy, security and redundancy for your technology solutions cannot solely rest with your internal IT and, for most people, external IT pro- viders,” Mr Gray said.
Mr Gray’s presentation to about 160 people provided an overview on four key areas helping business leaders stay ahead of technology risks: governance, technology controls, external dependency and incident response.
Not understanding technology risks was no longer an excuse, he said.
“Technology is tricky for most of us,” he sadi.
“Understanding some basic questions around how technology works and asking the right questions goes a long way to making really sensible decisions.”
Mr Gray said business owners should know where information was stored, down to where the servers were sited, particularly as information was duplicated and shared.
“We live in an interconnected world … because of that inter-connectedness it’s not uncommon for even micro businesses to have 5, 10 or 15 third party suppliers,” he said.
“What that usually means is the weakest link in any sort of chainmay not be you, but probably somebody else.”