Q+A: The cyber risk hiding in every business

[upbeat music] Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more. I'm Shaun Aylmer. Cyber attacks are now a major business risk. A breach can disrupt operations, expose sensitive financial information, and seriously damage the trust of customers. That's particularly important for accountants, financial advisors, and other businesses entrusted with some of our most sensitive financial and personal information. But the work businesses do to protect themselves from cyber threats can also make them better businesses, improving processes, governance, and even the way they deal with clients. This episode was recorded at Class Ignite 2026, proud supporters of our podcast. Lydia Pearson is head of growth solutions at My Prosperity. Hello, Lydia.

Hello, Shaun.

Nathan Steiner is senior director of solution consulting at DocuSign. Hello, Nathan.

Hi, Shaun.

Greg Hansen is executive group strategy at Hub24.

Hi, Shaun.

Welcome, Greg. Lydia, Nathan, Greg, let's start with Nathan. Cyber security used to be something you left to the IT department. Are there still businesses that think of it that way, or are we beyond that?

I think we're way beyond that, and for those businesses that aren't, they should seriously s- consider bringing it, bringing it forward in terms of front of mind. Think of an accounting company. You can be delivering the best advice, the best services, the most comprehensive tax strategies and accounting, um, portfolio of, of products and outcomes. But if a customer or client's data is breached, if they're subjected to services downtime, if their experience i- is negative to the context of causing a customer's customer's impact, then all of that strategy, advice, products and services that have been delivered completely gets eroded.

When you're dealing with financial information every day, right, and you really have to have front of... security front of mind, does that mean you have to run your business differently or not?

I don't think you have to run your business differently. It's always... A business owner always thinks about, well, what's core to their business model, their differentiators, the products and the services that they're offering. That always stays fundamentally core. I think, you know, what they need to be continually continuing to adapt to is those elements that help protect and preserve those elements of core business. What gives them competitive advantage? How do they continue to serve their customers in the most appropriate way? And the landscape and the dynamics of that is changing, and so that's what they need to be continually thinking about, is the, being highly adaptable to a changing landscape that's becoming more and more digital, and therefore there are different surface areas, there are different dimensions, and there are different risks that are continuing to expose themselves and their businesses to, that they need to be keeping front of mind.

So maybe, Greg, the better question is how should people think about that whole risk as part of their business process?

Returning to a question you asked before, if anyone is complacent about it, they just