Your public or affordable housing organization can't develop an informed response to emerging risks if you don't know what they are. HAI Group has your back.

Keeping information safe and secure is a challenging development for businesses of all sizes over the last few years, including public and affordable housing organizations. Expeditious shifts from in-person to online to hybrid workplaces forced companies to change, or at least reexamine, their cybersecurity practices and protocols, and far too often they weren’t prepared. 

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, now in its 19th year. So why should you—someone working in the housing industry—care about cybersecurity? Public and affordable organizations are being breached by cybercriminals with increasing frequency.

The staff at Denver Housing Authority (DHA) weren't blind to the possibility of a cyberattack.

In fact, staff had taken steps in 2021 to address the organization's cybersecurity vulnerabilities, said Jim DiPaolo, DHA's deputy CFO. But in September 2021, disaster struck—DHA was completely locked out of the files and systems it relies on due to a ransomware attack. 

"We had a fairly good business continuity plan," DiPaolo said during a June 2022 interview with HAI Group. "We were backing up our systems, and felt that we had a fairly strong [cybersecurity] program that wasn't going to be open to this type of threat."

The housing industry continues to be an attractive target for cybercriminals, who can do real damage to your agency in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, there are organizations like the Center for Internet Security (CIS), whose singular goal is to help you keep your IT systems and data secure.

At HAI Group, we define risk as the existence of uncertainty regarding a future loss. The “uncertainty” is an event that can occur and, in the case of a housing organization, adversely affect its objectives, mission, vision, or bottom line.

It’s no secret that natural disasters are becoming more prevalent across the country. Over the last decade, the U.S. has seen at least ten disasters annually, costing over $1 billion each time. In the context of affordable housing, 40 percent of the nation’s occupied rental stock is located in areas likely to experience substantial annual losses due to natural disasters.

Take a moment to think back to all of the jobs you’ve had over the years. What made you quit? If you answered having a lack of opportunities for advancement, you’d agree with 63 percent of workers in a recent survey who contributed to the Great Resignation of 2021. As an employer, one thing that you can do to help combat this situation is to develop an online training onboarding program for new hires. Showing employees right off the bat that professional development is important in your organization is critical to retaining talent. Here are three tips to help create a solid program that delivers the most impact.

If you’re a policyholder at HAI Group, we want you to know that we have your back. We don’t disappear once your policy is issued. On the contrary, our goal as your insurance carrier is to establish a relationship with you and communicate regularly to ensure your organization is protected.