Is Your Association Vulnerable to Phishing Attacks?

It’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month — are you, your employees, and your boards of directors aware of community associations’ risks from phishing attacks? If not, or if proper precautions aren’t taken, your clients and their owners could lose control of their confidential information.

And the risks are even higher if you have staff working from home, potentially without the protections that are in place on their work devices.

Associations, as well as managers, don’t always take cybersecurity as seriously as they should. “They have a false illusion of security,” Marcus says. “They think, ‘who’s going to target us?” You might be surprised, though — it’s not just large, well-known companies that need to worry.

According to the Ponemon Institute’s “2019 State of Cybersecurity in Global Small and Medium Size Businesses” report, the previous three years saw a significant increase in small and medium businesses experiencing a data breach. Sixty-six percent of the survey respondents said they had experienced a cyberattack in the past 12 months, and 53 percent experienced phishing attacks.

It’s less about an organization’s size or industry than how it does business. “Let’s say a management company uses an electronic funds transfer (EFT) system for collecting dues or fees payments,” Marcus says. “Inside its servers is all the contact information of every owner and maybe bank information or credit card information. There will be account information for the reserves.

“Once a criminal has access to that system, there’s all sorts of sensitive information.”

Learn how to protect yourself: Don’t Let Your Clients Get Caught: How to Avoid Phishing Risks

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President