BetaNews Staff

Most people will be glad to see the back of 2020. It caused stress for workers in many industries around the world, as well as hardship for businesses, and forced people out of routines they had been used to operating in for years. It also forced the hand of businesses to innovate and roll out technology projects faster than usual. Whether it was COVID-19 contact tracing applications or contactless grocery orders, we saw the strength of IT teams working closely with the rest of the business to bring about change.

But now comes the next stage. 2021 will be a time to build on what took place in an unprecedented year and discover ways to uncover value. We’ll know exactly what outcomes our innovations are generating and thus we’ll be better informed for the steps we take in years to come. As we look to the new year, here are the top trends that will be most critical to the IT industry.

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No one could have predicted the madness of 2020. From a cybersecurity perspective, adversaries hit a German hospital with ransomware that resulted in a fatality, voting equipment manufacturers opted to work with security researchers to find bugs in their networks and websites, and other governments around the globe began to lean into vulnerability disclosure programs (VDPs) to even the playing field with increasingly sophisticated attackers. As a result, these events paved the way for continued change in the new year.

Read on for a glimpse of what we can expect to occur from a security perspective.

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We’ve become an application-centric society. We use apps to help us do our work, to communicate, to stream entertainment, to monitor our health, and to do a whole lot more. Over the years, the number of desktop and mobile apps has grown dramatically. Where we deliver them from has changed too. The cloud has played a huge role as we move away from strictly on-premises data centers to a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud approach. And, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on how we built, delivered, and consumed our applications in 2020. But what will 2021 bring?

Here are 10 predictions for applications and application delivery in the coming year.

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Kubernetes is a platform for managing containerized workloads. Over recent years, it has pushed out alternative platforms and become a defacto standard.

All major cloud vendors now offer managed Kubernetes services, and there are no emerging competitors poised to unseat it. This article gives an overview of the rationale behind the emergence of Kubernetes and related technologies, and their place in an overall automation strategy.

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Holiday shoppers are largely housebound this year, meaning many consumers are doing most of their gift-buying online. We’re seeing record-breaking turnouts for virtual sales, with Cyber Monday

experiencing 30 percent growth year-over-year. Retailers are under an incredible amount of pressure to deliver an exceptional experience, even though many are likely dealing with volumes of online orders they’ve never had to handle before. Cybercriminals see this as a brilliant opportunity to execute ransomware campaigns, as any disruption can be detrimental to retailers during this season.

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"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." -- Famous Stoic and Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

Some organizations have heavily invested in analytics and data scientist teams -- particularly in the manufacturing, retail, and automotive sectors. COVID-19 has disrupted their supply chains, and they find themselves needing to source answers in a day, not in the weeks they would have had to plan through changes last year. They must turn to experts on the front-lines of the business for action, and yet combine this expertise with the power of data scientists’ models to ensure they take optimal measures.

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The ability of customer-facing teams to adapt to rapid changes in the face of unprecedented disruption over the past year has been remarkable. Preparing ahead for the new year, companies are realizing that many of the changes they’ve implemented in reaction to the crisis will in fact have to become a fundamental part of their strategy for business growth.

Here are three of the norms business leaders will need to come to terms with to plan for recovery and renewal in 2021.

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Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday season have become prime targets for cybercriminals in recent years, as online retailers make it a global phenomenon that is no longer a one-day only event. As we approach this time of the year, cybercriminals will be looking to take advantage of the millions of shoppers who will take to the internet in search of the best deals.

This holiday season, more people than ever before, will shop online in the interest of public safety due to COVID-19, some of whom will have little to no previous experience navigating online shopping and almost no internet security knowledge.

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At the moment, thanks to COVID-19, more and more people have been forced to work remotely, but it is a work practice that is being coming increasingly common regardless of whether there is a pandemic or not. But it can be difficult to find a remote access tool that provides everything you need, particularly if you are working across multiple platforms.

NoMachine 7 goes far beyond the capabilities of many remote desktop tools in being available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, iOS and ARM. With just about all bases covered, this latest version introduces not only an updated look, but also makes setting up remote sessions easier than ever.

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The idea of commuting to an office space for work increasingly feels like an outdated approach, especially as we are months into stay-at-home orders amid COVID-19. However, not long ago, some businesses were resistant to the idea of remote work, citing fears such as reduced employee output.

Fortunately, as organizations across all industries were forced to rapidly support remote work, many have been pleasantly surprised by continued, high levels of employee productivity, putting previous fears about diminished output to rest. Unfortunately, many organizations are still fumbling to put security infrastructure in place that enables remote work productivity without compromising security. In fact, 33 percent of organizations were not sufficiently prepared to support remote operations at the beginning of the pandemic, and many IT teams have been finding that they are in need of meaningful changes.

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Using unique passwords is essential for keeping documents, data and accounts safe. However, it can be hard to remember them all.

Using password managers is the ideal solution for keeping everything organized. Now that the new year is nearly upon us, it’s time to take a look at the best password managers for 2021.

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For many organizations, the immediate shift to remote work meant IT pros had to manage a hyper-accelerated, mass cloud migration coupled with large-scale SaaS platform rollouts. Daily users of Microsoft Teams, for example, rose from 75 million to 115 million in less than six months. Now that the first tidal wave of digital transformation has passed, IT and security teams should recalibrate and reprioritize application security and data governance in 2021 and beyond.

And while the pandemic has underscored major SaaS platform security concerns, including a rise in sophisticated cyber threats, research indicates many organizations still struggle with the fundamental tasks needed to secure the workforce -- both remote and on-prem. Here are three common mistakes and how to avoid them.

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Paying off a bad actor for successfully implementing ransomware into an organization is the enterprise equivalent of rewarding a bad child who vandalized a home with candy -- but unfortunately, many organizations often have no choice but to pay… and pay a lot.

Technology has enabled asymmetric attacks. In other words, one attacker can federate an attack across many organizations. The attacker needs to get the attack right once -- while the defenders (corporations, governments, hospitals, etc.) need to get their defense right every… single… time!

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Without a doubt, the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation initiatives, and, in our new remote working environment, enterprises are focusing on how they can continue to provide seamless digital experiences to consumers. To achieve this, APIs are widely recognized as the oil that fuels our digital world, and different types of APIs power the digital mesh to which we are now all connected. 

Once considered niche, API technology has now become mainstream and is viewed as an integral part of the day-to-day digital landscape. In fact, according to The Forrester Wave: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020 report, "By opening access to digital business capabilities, APIs drive agility to optimise customer experiences, create dynamic digital ecosystems, achieve operational excellence, and build platform business models." 

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The Christmas shopping season is in full swing. This year, online retailers pushed the boundaries with "Black November" in the hopes of improving their online sales, thanks to the uncertainty around in-store shopping due to COVID-19, leading many customers to make their purchases from the safety of their own homes.

As a result, e-commerce merchants have witnessed a significant uptick in users and devices connecting to websites than in recent years.

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