Hamish Sopher, Check Point New Zealand country manager, offers some thoughts on fresh conversations to have with your customers about cybersecurity.

Last year kept IT security professionals particularly busy. We saw increases in social engineering exploits, as well as major data breaches at several well-known organisations, including the December Sony hack. Targeted malware campaigns, RAM scraper and ransomware attacks contribute to the headlines – and headaches – seen and felt by the IT community.

So what should you consider as you start fresh conversations about cyber security with your new, current and past customers?

Mobility can be the weakest link

As the giving holidays have passed, many organisations are undoubtedly inundated with new gadgets. But many security problems arise due to employees bringing more devices onto their organisations' networks.

Make sure your customers aren't one of the 43% of ANZ organisations that don't manage business data on employee devices. That leaves a hole from which attackers can access personally identifiable information, passwords, business and personal email, corporate documents and gain access to the corporate network and applications.

Protect against attacks on infrastructure

According to the Ponemon Institute, nearly 70% of critical infrastructure companies suffered a security breach in 2014. Cyberattacks, like Stuxnet, Flame and Gauss, on public utilities and key industrial processes will continue using malware to target the SCADA systems that control them.

Collaboration is key

While organisations prefer to keep their security posture under wraps, it's important that they receive as clear and full a picture of the threat landscape from their security products.

When considering security solutions, note that collaborative sharing of threat intelligence will offer the most up-to-date protections that suit an end-users' specific needs.

How do you jump start your talks? Keep the lines of communication open between yourselves and your customers – understand what they are seeing, hearing and feeling, and do something about it. Also, keep your eyes and ears open to emerging threats: Businesses cannot easily protect themselves against threats that their defences cannot ‘see.'