By Tamara Irminger Underwood
According to a recent Foreign Policy article, cyber warfare won’t necessarily target military operations, but businesses and infrastructure within a country. “It won’t be cutting-edge cyberattacks that cause the much-feared cyber-Pearl Harbor in the United States or elsewhere. Instead, it will likely be mundane strikes against industrial control systems, transportation networks, and health care providers—because their infrastructure is out of date, poorly maintained, ill-understood, and often un-patchable,” the article states. So how do companies protect themselves from such attacks? Market research is a good place to start.
Smaller companies often don’t have the resources to devote to a dedicated security team, while larger companies tend to be more siloed, with executive teams often out-of-touch with their security operations. Our InterQ team has conducted market research on behalf of a number of companies to help them identify cyber vulnerabilities within their organizations. We’ve also worked closely with cybersecurity organizations to explore organizational structures of their clients, assisting them with roadmapping and understanding the current cyber-landscape amongst cyber experts.
InterQ has close-up views of the many issues, hurdles, and opportunities facing cybersecurity. There are often “blind spots” within organizations that make it difficult to fully appreciate the vulnerabilities and organizational barriers.
If you’re wondering why it’s necessary to hire a market research firm to help identify where weaknesses within an organization reside, rather than do it in-house, it’s because market researchers are neutral and have the expertise to develop questions that get to the heart of the matter. Additionally, market researchers are often trained in how to coax more nuanced answers from their subjects. Getting to the “how” and “why” a respondent answers often yields valuable understandings that provide rich insight for marketing and strategic teams.
Technology is often the backbone of an organization, and safeguarding sensitive data is becoming more important. The costs to a company are too high when there is a security breach, as a number of recent examples of high-profile cases show.
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Cyber security should be taken seriously, and hiring a market research firm to help you identify internal vulnerabilities and attitudes regarding this subject is where to start.
