Cyber insurance is a crucial tool housing organizations should consider leveraging to hedge against increasing cyber-related risks such as ransomware, business email compromise, and data breaches.

Since cybersecurity can feel overwhelming for those outside the information technology sphere, we've developed a list of 15 (mostly non-technical) cybersecurity terms that public and affordable housing leaders and employees should know in 2023. 

When Enfield (CT) Housing Authority Executive Director Scott Bertrand heard about the KnowBe4 cybersecurity awareness training discounts available to HAI Group members, he didn’t hesitate to take advantage.

Cybersecurity threats are all too real for housing organizations and take many forms, including phishing, ransomware, and business email compromise.

Improving your public housing organization's cybersecurity posture is necessary for 2023, especially given the high stakes. 

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.

Even the best-prepared organization is vulnerable to cybercriminals seeking to hold data and systems hostage in exchange for payment. Ransomware attacks, as they’re known, impact every industry. Since 2016, the U.S. has experienced around 4,000 ransomware attacks daily.