Ivan Shefrin, Executive Director of Cybersecurity Services at Comcast Business, and Rick Snyder, former Governor of Michigan and CEO of SensCy, discussed the importance of cybersecurity for businesses at the 2025 Detroit Policy Conference. U.S. Representative Brenda Lawrence moderated the conversation. Shefrin noted that the cybersecurity attack surface is growing daily, encompassing people and machines.
He emphasized that people are often the weakest link in cybersecurity. Another big trend we see is that people are the weakest link. As the governor pointed out, it’s not just people.
It’s people, process, and technology,” said Shefrin. Snyder argued for a strong cybersecurity culture, saying, “If you look at most organizations, cybersecurity is never going to be their top priority unless you get hacked…you cannot ignore it.” He suggested training, awareness, time delays when reviewing emails, and senior leadership involvement. Shefrin echoed this sentiment, stressing the importance of leadership in fostering a robust cybersecurity culture.
“Cybersecurity starts at the top down,” he said. Shefrin’s top advice for businesses is to regularly back up their data and have a detailed response plan in place.
Importance of robust cybersecurity culture
Good network security and multifactor authentication are essential to protect employee and company data. Snyder pointed out that incident response plans are frequently neglected, with only about one-third of organizations having plans in place. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated.
Companies are increasingly using AI to bolster their cybersecurity efforts, leading to an AI arms race. “We like to give credit scores to companies on their cyber health, but only 6% of organizations are in safer areas. 94% are in the poorer areas.
We need to start prioritizing cybersecurity,” said Snyder. Shefrin reiterated that cybersecurity is a team effort. The challenge is that cybersecurity is a team sport…everyone should be aware and involved.
Emerging cybersecurity trends include weaponizing physical devices like robotics and drones, quantum computing, and broken encryption algorithms.
Shefrin concluded with a warning, “They will go after anybody, including small businesses. I’ve seen it time and time again…so don’t think that just because you are small, they are going to ignore you.”
As businesses face increasingly complex cybersecurity threats, organizations of all sizes must adopt comprehensive cybersecurity strategies, involve senior leadership, and stay updated on emerging risks and technologies.
April Isaacs is a news contributor for DevX.com She is long-term, self-proclaimed nerd. She loves all things tech and computers and still has her first Dreamcast system. It is lovingly named Joni, after Joni Mitchell.
