Critical Issues in 2024
There are two critical issues that have hit home for me in 2024
No matter what your business - club, pub, restaurant or other business – whether for profit or for purpose (not for profit), there are two critical issues that have been brought starkly home to me in the first three (3) months of 2024.
The first is Time Management and the second, Cyber Security. If you remember I wrote about time management for my February 2023 newsletter and as the universe would have it, I have fallen foul of not adhering to my own time management principles.
Whilst I do a ‘To Do’ list at least weekly and run my week (under my current contract) with a default diary – Clear Pokies, Banking and do the beer lines on Mondays, check rosters by Friday and place stock orders on Friday (preferably but sometime on Sunday) – the best laid plans can fall victim to external time pressures.
As I discussed last year, there are only 168 hours in every week. I am on the Board of a company with 5 subsidiaries, on the board of a charitable Foundation and also I am a Rotarian. In my Rotary life I was going to be the District Governor for my district for the 2024 – 25 Rotary year, but time and work pressures overran that ambitious ploy.
Your reach a point where there are not enough hours left in the day or week to do everything. Clients are my first priority, family second and then Rotary is in third place, as my way to give back to the community. And of course, don’t forget your own health is critical in this too.
When you think you’re the Time Management guru, you get carried away and say “sure, I can do that”….until you can’t. Managing conflicting priorities is as much an art as it is a science, but as a famous character once said “a man’s (person’s) gotta know his (their) limitations”.
So when you run out of capacity, you have to learn to say No. That is even after you’ve learnt to say “When do you need that by?” It is critical to learn to work smarter, not harder and use that default diary to allocate ‘me time’ – to go sailing, swimming, play golf or tennis – and have some social and recreational time with family and friends too.
The second critical issue is one so often overlooked by many, until it hits you – Cyber Security. As a society we have become both reliant and complacent about everything we now do with technology. And many of us scoff at the cyber security issue – really a 13 character password with upper case, lower case, numbers and a special character???
Do yourselves a favour and watch Michael McIntyre’s dissertation on Passwords. Whilst very funny it is scarily accurate and drives home the issue around the lack of security we often allow for our critical information.
Passwords are but one element of cyber security and businesses in particular have much confidential information that needs to be protected from bad actors hacking your system for financial gain, malicious data dissemination or just to cause reputational damage to your organisation. Even the simple addition of two factor authentication (2FA) can significantly improve your security.
The basics are there for all to implement –
X Password requirements
X Firewall and Anti-virus and Anti Malware Measures
X Email Security Measures
X Sensitive Data Security
X Handling Technology (equipment)
X Social Media and Internet Access Rules
X Incident Response Preparedness
X Continuous improvement
I can provide your organisation with a Cybersecurity Policy and Plan, if you don’t have one and of course, you can also utilise the Australian Signals Directorate’s guidance on Cyber Security Principles. Their four key activities are:
X Govern
X Protect
X Detect
X Respond
When you are involved in a cybercrime, the value of your back up data is immeasurable, as you can often quickly and professionally restore the data to continue your operations with minimal interruption.
Ask yourself these questions:
X Do we have internal or external Information Technology (IT) capability?
X Do we have built in redundancy (back up of information and equipment)
X How secure is our critical data?
X What are our privacy and security obligations if we are holding customers’ information in our database?
X What might a bad actor wish to access in a cyber attack?
X How can we better protect our data?
X How would we respond in the event of a cyber attack on our organisation?
X Who in our organisation is the Cyber Security champion/manager?
No matter how big or small your organisation, we are all so reliant on technology and data to conduct business as usual, we must raise our level of awareness of a possible cyber threat or even a simple malfunction of the technology – both software and hardware.
For some organisations, compliance with the International Standard ISO/IEC 27002 Information Security Management System could be essential for doing business in the future, in cyber based industries. For other companies investing in a copy of the standard, to inform your cybersecurity policy and procedure, could be a small but significant investment.
For more information on Time management or Cyber Security contact Ron Browne, Managing Consultant 0414 633 423 or ron@extrapreneurservices.com.au.
