Signature March/April 2015 - 19

I
Girl turns out to be a hacker and steals
boy's association membership password,
gains access to the organization's database, and makes off with a plethora of
personal and financial information.
OK - so perhaps it's the modern-day
version of an age-old story. It wasn't that
long ago when terms like cyberattack
and cybersecurity existed only in science
fiction. The term "cyber" as we think of
it today only showed up in English vernacular in the 1980s.
And now, we see the word
everywhere, especially in
the headlines. Recent data
breaches at corporations such
as Target and Home Depot
and nonfinancially motivated
hacks of groups like Sony are
popping up all over the news
- and it's not just the media
being overly dramatic.
A Washington think tank
- the Center for Strategic
and International Studies -
has estimated the annual cost
of cybercrime to the world
economy at more than $445
billion, or almost 1 percent
of global income. But it's not just corporate giants or businesses with giant bank
accounts that are at risk. On February 4,
for example, the University of Central
Florida announced that a January data
breach compromised the social security
numbers and names of about 63,000 students and employees. The university said

t 's an ag e -old s tory.
Boy me e ts g irl.
B oy fal ls for g irl.

the bulk of the data was on employees,
including former employees as far back
as the 1980s.
Cyberattacks like this raise the question
of what associations are doing to protect
themselves and their memberships.
Associations are creating and maintaining databases with a myriad array
of identification and financial information such as date of birth, marital status,
social security numbers, performance

Wes Trochlil, president of Effective
Database Management, says many associations' cyber preparedness is woefully
lacking. He points to a recent survey of
association leaders by the Washington,
DC-based SCIPP International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to information
security. While 85 percent of participants
said a data breach response plan was very
important or somewhat important, only
33 percent of the associations have one. In
addition, fewer than half of the
associations, 44 percent, had a
specific data security function
in their organizations.
"There is definitely a fear
of waking up one morning to
read a headline about yourself," Trochlil says. "But there
is a form of denial among
associations. 'We're just a
small organization. No one
is looking for our data.' We've
all heard about big breaches
like Target, Sony, but those are
easy to dismiss as big organizations with millions of records.
In truth, it doesn't matter who
you are. The people who are
hunting for data are just looking for weaknesses. It's a shotgun approach. By the law
of averages, they are going to find associations with weaknesses."
Sometimes, the association itself may
not be the target - it could be a particular member. For example, if a hacker is
trying to gather information on a specific

More and more Baby Boomers are
leaving, and more and more Millennial
leaders are coming in. Associations
have to transition to more sophisticated
web integration and that means more
sophisticated cybersecurity.
- Wendy Mann, NAIOP

evaluations, payroll, bank account
numbers, credit ratings, credentials,
donor information, and more. Is all this
information safe? Is any information
safe in this age of cyberattacks?
What are your members' security
expectations, and how would they react
to your organization if a breach occurred?

MARCH/APRIL 16

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signature March/April 2015

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