4 Trends You Need To Be Aware Of

By Lauren Wickstead, TPx Chief Marketing Officer

The seismic shift we’ve all experienced over the past two years was a harbinger of a new workplace.

The future is often hard to predict with any certainty, but one safe prediction is that the dangers facing businesses today will not subside. Companies face a range of vulnerabilities, whether the talent shortage, fallout from the pandemic, or the endless barrage of cyberattacks.

Few want to rehash the trials of the last couple of years, but they cannot be ignored, and they provide lessons for the future. Instead, companies must look forward with open eyes and assess whether they are prepared for the looming challenges.

They must learn from past mistakes and missteps, and we must recognize the potential security risks that litter the modern business landscape. New challenges may appear, but the old ones do not subside.

Every Company Will Become A Cyber Target

Too often, companies have a short-term view of cyberattacks. They tend to forget the high-profile attacks that disrupted commerce, with targets ranging from the United Nations to Colonial Pipeline to Fast Company.

If these high-profile institutions are targets, every organization is. Instead of forgetting about these security incidents, these attacks should remain a wake-up call even after the headlines fade.

Consider a recent finding from The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as proof. It found that bad actors are moving their focus away from “big-game” targets, meaning today, every company is a target.

“Ransomware tactics and techniques continued to evolve in 2021, which demonstrates ransomware threat actors’ growing technological sophistication and an increased ransomware threat to organizations globally,” CISA said.

As modern business increases in complexity, organizations would greatly benefit from a team keeping an eye on emerging trends and threats. They can readily develop action plans to keep one step ahead of potentially drastic changes by simply elevating their position.

IT Teams Will Take A Proactive Role

As we prepare for this new era, we must redefine the role of IT. 

To be successful, leaders must empower their IT teams to make decisions to protect the company. They must eliminate bottlenecks and anything slowing down the pace of business.

It has grown increasingly apparent that IT teams enable modern business. Their roles will grow increasingly critical to organizations navigating the perilous business landscape.

 

The teams are no longer limited to rolling out hardware or software to new employees, setting up email accounts, or helping team members when they encounter a problem.

Leaders cannot leave their cybersecurity to chance. Their team must be forward-focused and laser-focused, ensuring the entire organization remains security-focused. IT teams are ideally suited for this task because they are inherently connected to every department within the company and have their fingers in almost every aspect of modern business.

IT teams aren’t new to organizations. But for too long, they’ve been relegated to reactionary roles; we call them when there is a technology problem. They must now shift from reactive to proactive roles.

The Talent Shortage Will Force The Increased Adoption Of MSPs

Many companies have difficulty sourcing and retaining the talent they need to operate at their best, and when looking at the many challenges facing companies today, especially cybersecurity, companies cannot afford to operate short-handed indefinitely.

The Great Resignation, which had its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic, is only exacerbating the problem. However, companies may want to be prepared for the long haul; according to the Harvard Business Review, the turnover may be part of a more significant workplace transformation.

Operating short-handed leads to a bad customer experience. With many companies looking to cut spending because of current economic concerns, companies shouldn’t give their customers an excuse to look to their competitors.

Since people are the backbone of an organization and critical to its success, companies must place a renewed emphasis on their approach to talent management. As part of that process, companies need to plan for ongoing worker shortages.

Many companies want to handle everything in-house. However, some of the more significant issues facing businesses — such as implementing software or developing a cybersecurity plan — require a bona fide IT expert or an outsourced MSP team.

Everyone Will Play A Role In Organizational Security.

The first step is for an organization’s leadership to embrace and properly communicate change. To enable modern business, the IT team must be embedded into operations, and everyone plays a role in keeping an organization safe.

The process starts with the right security framework that thwarts bad actors but doesn’t stymie business. But any plan is only as good as its execution; any security framework needs to be tested and refined as new threats arise.

Protecting an organization’s network requires continuous effort. IT teams should include ongoing testing to ensure teams follow protocols.

 Solutions are available for every organization’s budget, from Penetration Testing (Pen Testing), a more costly offering to perform a simulated cyberattack on a computer system, to Penetration Scanning (Pen Scanning). This more affordable offering leverages an automated scanning platform to identify where security weaknesses and risks exist across the network.

When coupled with Vulnerability Scanning, which evaluates devices connected to the network to identify vulnerabilities, organizations can better understand where and how a hacker might try and exploit them.

Today’s threats will only increase in complexity. IT teams need to have a dual approach: Addressing today’s threats and laying a foundation for the as-yet-unknown ones of tomorrow.

Businesses’ headwinds may, at times, seem intense and even overwhelming. But they are navigable; it merely requires some planning.

The companies that don’t take this threat seriously risk winding up a statistic in next year’s report.

It’s easy to think idle threats are nothing more than speculation and overstated, but are you prepared to find out the threats were real, and do you have the right team to help you prepare?

About The Author

Lauren Wickstead serves as TPx’s Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for developing and leading a results-focused marketing strategy to drive growth and bolster brand recognition for the company.