If 2015 was the year that corporate boards started to stay up at night thinking about cybersecurity like their IT guys, 2016 will be the year that they will take action to work with their C-Suite and CIO and/or CISO to get a handle on data security in the organization and take control of risk management.

We are seeing corporate boards put data security on their agendas for risk management more frequently, and that trend will continue throughout 2016.

Corporate boards should be, are and will be engaged in managing data security risks for their organizations in 2016 and will become more educated so the gap between data security and the board room can be bridged. If you are a corporate board member and you don’t understand what malware or phishing is, get engaged, ask questions, and become educated. If the organization doesn’t have an information governance or data privacy and security program, find out why and get it in the budget. Learn about cybersecurity and take action to protect your organization in the coming year of anticipated increased data breaches.