Securing remote work isn't a perk of the job: 4 tips for the future of flexibility
In workplaces around the country, business leaders are struggling to settle on a long-term policy for their return to the office. The issue isn’t just the pandemic, although sudden changes have caused companies like Ford and Google to delay their return-to-office strategies. The more pressing challenge as enterprises grapple with the choice of remote or in-person work is employee retention and recruitment. The fact of the matter is some workers would rather quit than go back to commuting and working in an office.
But while corporate leaders are considering the impact of remote, hybrid, and in-person work policies as part of their retention strategies, they must also bear in mind the cybersecurity implications of these flexible approaches. For your CISOs and security team leads, securing remote workers isn’t a perk of the job.
Moving to the cloud is the basis of a good Business Continuity Plan
A Business Continuity Plan is, broadly speaking, a set of processes and principles to improve resilience and ensure a business can continue functioning. Due to the importance of IT to productivity for almost every organization in the 21st century -- downtime, when IT systems are offline, is its antithesis.
Thanks to the rapid adoption of digital tools spurred on by the pandemic and the general move to online we have seen throughout the world, there is a tremendous amount of risk out there for businesses with online assets, from cyberattacks and ransomware to natural disasters and power outages. However, using cloud-based IT assets such as remote desktops, SaaS applications, and cloud storage of data can be a shortcut to protecting their continuity -- and therefore the continuity of your business.
How can growing MSPs navigate today's staffing challenges?
Over the last two years, the rise of remote working and increased digitalization across private and public sectors has increased demand across the MSP ecosystem, giving many businesses the opportunity to grow.
However, these opportunities can also bring significant challenges. For instance, it’s crucial to balance the needs of existing clients with the time and resources required to successfully onboard new ones. Some organizations find they are so focused on meeting and exceeding the expectations of their current customers, that it can limit their ability to expand -- with an inevitable knock-on effect on growth. And when teams are already at capacity, the idea of adding to their workload can seem like an impossibility.
Reducing digital friction for a better employee experience
IT departments added a stack of tasks to their docket when remote and hybrid working became the norm. While initial purchases of video conferencing and business communication subscriptions were temporary fixes, they were not the only long-term solutions necessary to provide the seamless digital experience employees needed to carry out their roles.
The pandemic has strengthened the need to improve the digital experience business case for organizations that wish to increase employee engagement, satisfaction and retention. Employees, so used to having immediate responses from their home-use apps, have come to expect the same instant feedback from workplace technology but in many cases are not getting it.
Too much information? How endless knowledge searches hold your organization back
Data volumes have skyrocketed in recent years, and Statista estimates that 59 sextillion bytes were generated in 2020 -- more than twice the amount generated in 2017.
What are we doing with the vast quantities of knowledge available to us? In most cases, as businesses, absolutely nothing. Only .5 percent of knowledge collected by organizations is used or analyzed, and less than half (.25 percent) plays any part in business decision-making.
4 steps to improve FinOps and cloud cost optimization
What’s the optimal way to manage cloud finances, one of the core disciplines of a FinOps practice?
The answer largely relies on automating efforts, but many FinOps practitioners haven’t taken full advantage of opportunities available to them or of the savings available to their organizations. According to a report from the FinOps Foundation, a Linux Foundation non-profit trade association focused on codifying and promoting cloud financial management best practices and standards, nearly half (49 percent) of the more than 800 respondents (with a collective $30+ billion in annual cloud spend) had little or no automation of cloud spend management.
The increasing importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence
Globally, the cyber threat level to organizations remains high and the current situation only serves to highlight this further. To this point, any organization that has substantial gaps in its cybersecurity capabilities is operating at risk, and when the threat landscape changes, as it has now, so we become more aware of the vulnerabilities that we have carried for some time and the need for better Cyber Threat Intelligence.
Two major cybersecurity events of the past 12 months really showcase the requirement for CTI in network security operations -- the SolarWinds software supply chain attack which broke at the start of 2021 and the Log4j vulnerability response process that occurred at the end of 2021. Both of these incidents highlight the need to rapidly gain situational awareness, contextualize vast amounts of information being shared, and prioritize remediation of significant threats.
Where will enterprise AI go in 2022?
If the pandemic was a stone, then the wave of digital transformation in its wake is a reverberating echo. 2020 and 2021 saw traditionally slow adopters of new technologies, from the largest financial institutions to local libraries, exploring new ways of providing digital-first experiences in a socially-distanced world. Artificial intelligence was of course decades in the making, but COVID pushed its proliferation to a point that has fully blossomed in the past two years.
Whether you’re a newcomer to the world of AI or its long-term champion, uncertainties both familiar and new continue to impact this ever-shifting landscape. There are, however, a few assurances to count on as AI’s trajectory progresses throughout the year.
AI can free us of busy work and usher in a new era of productivity
How much of their day do you think sales reps spend selling? All of it? Two-thirds? Maybe half? Nope.
The average rep spends just 35 percent of their time -- fewer than three hours a day -- actively selling. Where does the other 65 percent go? It’s devoured by internal meetings, travel, planning, and all the other peripheral, supporting, and administrative tasks they have to do. And here’s the thing: this trend isn’t unique to sales.
Why data-centric security is now a top priority for every business
In today’s business environment, data is one of the most valuable assets any organization owns. Consequently, a great deal of time and money is spent trying to ensure that the most effective data security measures are in place to protect it. But with so many options available, knowing which approach to take is becoming increasingly difficult.
Escalating cybercrime, the adoption of cloud computing, an explosion in mobile device usage, and varying technology and applications means there’s so much to consider. No matter the industry, a data security breach is now an increasingly likely scenario that all businesses could face. Security teams should therefore consider a strategy that is focused on protecting actual data throughout its entire lifecycle, rather than just focusing on the infrastructure around it.
The importance of face-to-face communication in the modern B2B sales process
Businesses now communicate with customers and prospects in new ways as technology has advanced. Today's sales reps use a variety of tools to accomplish their tasks, such as email, social media and video chat tools among others. Therefore, traditional in-person sales meetings have become less common.
However, even as the B2B sales process becomes increasingly digital, face-to-face meetings still provide certain benefits that no technology can replicate. In-person requests are 34 times more successful than those made over email, the close rate for in-person meetings is 57 percent, and executives and business travelers estimate that 28 percent of their current business would be lost without in-person meetings. While virtual communication is key, face-to-face meetings still hold the following advantages in the modern sales process.
Traditional telehealth is no longer the future of health care
Telehealth has taken the medical world by storm. Hospitals rapidly adopted these remote technologies out of necessity amid COVID-19, but it quickly became apparent that their potential goes even further.
Telehealth accounted for less than 1 percent of total health care volume before COVID, but it quickly became the norm. However, it won’t be the future of medicine. More than 70 percent of physicians are motivated to increase their telehealth use, and new technologies are emerging, so this practice is evolving. Here’s a look at how metaverse technologies are transforming the future of telemedicine.
Identity is the new frontline of cybersecurity
Identity is a battleground upon which all organizations must now fight. Responding to this growing threat is non-optional because identity is at the heart of the processes and technologies that power the new world of remote and hybrid working.
The "human element" is involved in 85 percent of breaches, with credential data theft and misuse now factoring into 61 percent of incidents, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2021 reported last year. Attackers know this, so they are constantly searching for ways of accessing valid credentials which they can use to gain access to the network and then move undetected in search of new targets.
What's really happening with eSIM and the IoT?
In the technology industry, hype is a fact of life. But hype doesn’t just create inflated expectations that are soon dashed against the rocky shores of reality, it can also lead to the misperception that a particular development is at a dead-end when in reality it still offers the potential for real progress.
This is happening now with the Internet of Things and its impact on modern business. While the IoT is still seen by many as a valuable business opportunity, hyper-inflated expectations of the widespread deployment of paradigm-shifting applications have recently been tempered by technical difficulties and a slower pace of adoption than what was originally expected. Despite this, a steady stream of new developments continues to push the IoT into the digital mainstream, leading researchers like IoT Analytics to predict the number of IoT connections will top 27 billion by 2025.
AI: Data's guardian angel
AI is one of the biggest tech-driven talking points of recent years. It's a debate that also translates into some very big numbers, with the global Artificial Intelligence market predicted to grow in size from $51.08 Billion in 2020 to $641.30 Billion by 2028 in a huge acceleration of investment. For AI, industry hype is increasingly being reflected in reality.
Indeed, organizations across the public and private sectors have already seen widespread benefits, particularly its impact across complex applications such as automation, digital assistance, and data analytics.
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