Five Cybersecurity Questions for Telco Boards

We have all read a few corporate blogs. Some of them are pretty boring. Desperate to please everybody, they end up pleasing nobody, because they play safe and say little. So credit goes to Augie K. Fabela II, Vimpelcom co-founder and former Chairman, for a blog on cybersecurity that pulls no punches. Short and sweet, it lists five questions that board members should ask about cybersecurity. As the overall theme of Fabela’s piece is sharing and co-operation, I have stolen shared his questions below.

From my experience as Board Director and Chairman of the Board at VimpelCom, we need to ask the right questions to ensure the prevention of cyber crises:

  • What systems do we have in place to guard against cyber-attacks?
  • What teams do we have in place to ensure rapid response programs can be implemented to limit cybercrime?
  • What processes do we have in place in the event of a crisis? Do you know what they are?
  • What notification and decision-making escalation systems do we have in place that cross management levels and geographies?
  • How closely are we working with our partners’ cross-company and cross-interest to ensure we are having the right conversations about what needs to be in place to identify, manage and counter cyber-attacks?

Fabela goes on to talk about sharing risks and responsibilities when managing cybersecurity, and he gives some examples where Vimpelcom excelled in responding to external attacks. The complete post is worth reading; you will find it here.

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalnshttp://revenueprotect.com

Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), an association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers. RAG was founded in 2003 and Eric was appointed CEO in 2016.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press.

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