Courtesy StoredTech
By Mark Shaw
Technology in 2020 is going to be summed up in one word: security. Everything from the latest news with Iran to the multitude of private businesses, as well as public entities like towns and city governments will be consumed by technology and its security.
Security was brought to light by the target level hacks and has filtered down to every local town. Cyber criminals are focusing more and more on smaller and smaller targets.
Why? Because they are easier to attack, they have less support to deal with it and they are often a gateway to a larger number of targets.
Take your local HVAC heating and cooling provider for example. They could be a small business making under one million dollars a year, but they have access to technology they have installed in many major firms. Every hospital, government agency and business in the region depends on their technology to keep their employees warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Having this technology is very commonplace, but it’s a great entry point for cyber criminals. Imagine if they could breach a small firm and gain access to all their client’s networks. This is exactly what is happening.
Toss in the cyber insurance world where such bad acts are covered by insurance. This just adds more incentive for the criminals to target your business. Even if you the business owner wouldn’t pay them to recover from the damage, your insurance policy will. This has created a chicken/egg scenario. Are we seeing more attacks because of the increased number of insurance payout or are we seeing an increased number of insurance payouts because of the number of attacks? It’s something we are watching closely in the technology community.
Long gone are the days when breaching a network is hard, takes skill and costs money. Now anyone at any skill set can buy a pre-packaged set of software to inflict damage on any business with costs as low as one dollar. No skills needed, no up-front investment. Just bad actors with low cost options looking for any easy target.
How do you overcome that?
Well its not easy but its not that hard either. If you stop looking at your technology security as an IT problem and start understanding it’s a business problem, you can work with a reputable technology firm to review, plan and execute a plan for security across the organization with several different facets.
To do nothing in today’s world is to wait for a failure. That is not an option. The best networks can be breached, so start the planning backwards. If something happens tomorrow, do you have your insurances up to date and accurate, do you have legal to support you, is your internal IT department or consulting firm ready to respond? Think about what you are going to do minute one and work your way back, all the way back, to the moment you could be breached.
In our world, this means education at the employee level. Is your staff trained and do they have the skills needed to spot a potential issue? How are they trained to respond? Do they just ignore it, do they share with their managers? How are you as an employer helping your employees be the first line of defense?
If you plan and educate before anything bad happens, and you plan for the worst to happen, you will be better able to deal with anything that comes your way.
In 2020, this is no longer a “what if” scenario, its when and how bad the impact will be. This year will be consumed by your data, your privacy and your businesses ability to handle, respond, and react to the negative forces that come with the technology gains. You will hear time and again about security. Get a jump on it and start asking “What’s my plan?” today.