Dr Caroline McGroary is a Chartered Accountant and Assistant Professor of Accounting at Dublin City University Business School (DCUBS). She joined DCUBS in 2010 after qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte. Since 2013 she has worked in the DCU campus in Saudi Arabia where she has been part of a university collaboration centered around the education of Saudi women.
As a Chartered Accountant and a Lecturer on a range of programmes across the Business School she outlines that cybersecurity is now one of the most significant risk management challenges facing business leaders in every type of organisation, as well as being a societal issue. While the importance of cybersecurity is undisputed, it is often considered to be a technical challenge and the responsibility of those with specific expertise in the technology field. While an extremely complex issue, Caroline highlights that there is an increasing need for cybersecurity to be acknowledged, understood and addressed by all those affected by it. She also outlines that the accountant has a key role to play in promoting a culture of cybersecurity excellence in organisations, and therefore, must better understand the issue.
As a Fulbright TechImpact Scholar, Caroline will be part of the Cybersecurity Policy and Governance Masters programme at Boston College and will conduct research exploring the extent to which organisations and individuals understand the cyber risks which they are exposed to, and whether they are adequately protected against these risks. It is intended that this research will help in the development of cybersecurity education programmes for non-experts.