Cyber Hygiene Education at Budapest Stock Exchange

by Daniel Remarc Bognar 2025.09.27

I was asked from the Stock Exchange Mentor program to give a Cyber Hygiene education to company owners.

Last week I had the opportunity to give a joint presentation together with Béki-Nagy Bertalan, CISO of Egis Global Pharmaceutical, about cyber hygiene and cyber awareness for company owners and executives.The goal was simple — and intentionally uncomfortable:

To show that cybersecurity is not an IT problem, but a business survival issue.

Daniel Remarc Bognar (CEO - Nextrust) and Beki-Nagy Bertalan CISO EGIS Global Pharmaceutical

The invisible war you are already part of

nder the surface of our calm, everyday business operations, a continuous, invisible war is taking place.State-sponsored actors, organized cybercriminal groups and politically motivated attackers are constantly active — whether you notice them or not.

Most companies only realize this after an incident.

Cybercrime today would rank as the world’s third-largest economy.The reason is simple:

• entry barriers are low

• tools and knowledge can be bought

• the potential revenue is massive

• the risk of getting caught is minimal

This is not chaos.It is a highly optimized business model.

Cyber Crime is the 3rd largest economy by Bloomberg

Why this is not an IT problem

One of the most important messages of the session was this:

Attackers don’t attack IT systems — they use them.

The real target is always the company itself:

• operations

• reputation

• customer trust

• revenue

• leadership credibility

From a board-level perspective, cyber risk sits next to financial, strategic and operational risks.Ignoring it doesn’t make it smaller — it only makes it unmanaged.

Cyberattacks work like bank robberies

Zscaler's view on Cyber Attacks

We compared modern cyberattacks to classic bank robberies:

• reconnaissance

• social engineering

• lateral movement

• extraction of value

The difference is that today this happens digitally, silently, often over weeks or months — and usually without visible alarms until it’s too late.

Recent high-profile cases (ransomware, supply-chain attacks, zero-click exploits, zero-day vulnerabilities) show that size and industry no longer matter

Why defending is getting harder

We also spoke openly about today’s challenges:

• AI is a double-edged sword — it helps defenders, but massively scales attacks

• Supply chains mean you are only as secure as your weakest partner

• Zero-day vulnerabilities cannot be “patched away” in advance

• Social engineering works because companies are made of people

There is no silver bullet.There never was.

Fortunately Zscaler makes this easier.

Cyber hygiene: boring, unsexy — and extremely effective

The good news:Effective defense is not necessarily expensive.

Basic cyber hygiene still stops a shocking number of attacks:

• proper backups

• multi-factor authentication

• endpoint protection

• visibility into what is actually happening

• clear incident response scenarios

Security is not a box you buy, but a process you operate.

Companies that do this well share common traits:

• leadership involvement

• clear responsibility

• realistic expectations toward IT and suppliers

• regular awareness and education

• tested business continuity plans

Cyber defense should be treated like insurance:you hope you never need it — but you cannot afford not to have it.

Check out Hoxhunt for more

People, process, technology — in balance

The classic People-Tech-Process

The closing message of the presentation was not about tools.

The best results come when companies find the right balance between:

• people (awareness and responsibility)

• technology (real value, not buzzwords)

• processes (simple, tested, usable under stress)

Cybersecurity maturity is not about perfection.It’s about being prepared enough to survive the day when something goes wrong.

Because one thing is certain:

It’s no longer a question of if, but when.

We have a saying at Nextrust, in cyber defense is like running away from a bear, you don't need to run faster than the grizzly, but faster than you peers. If you have basic cyber hygiene invest in a well choosen Zero Trust Architecture, you will be ahead of 90% of the other companies.