By Emma Dylan
What will be the most popular cybersecurity trend in the future?
Is there a crystal ball that would enable business owners to know what to expect in the coming years? While there’s no way to know what the future holds, IT managed service business owners that specialize in providing corporate cybersecurity tools and assistance to businesses throughout the United States have some insight into what the future holds. In the paragraphs below, they offer their take on what companies can do right now and in the near future to keep their companies secure from hacks and breaches.
Anthony Buonaspina is the founder and CEO of LI Tech Advisors. His prediction is that, in the near future, companies will take cybersecurity far more seriously than they do today. In fact, he states that it will become the most important aspect of running a successful business as companies that don’t put a premium on keeping data secure won’t make it in the days ahead. While other IT experts agree, they offer different advice based on their own experience.
Mike Shelah from Advantage Industries and Guy Baroan from Baroan Technologies both put a premium on employee training. Mike Shelah unequivocally states that cybersecurity training for employees will be the number one trend in the near future as more than 7 out of ten ransomware attacks and data breaches happen as a result of employee error. However, as Shelah points out, the training itself is not enough as company leaders and executives need to not only provide training sessions but also follow up on the training to ensure employees are implementing the best cybersecurity practices at all times. Guy Baroan reports that, as companies work to remedy successful cyberattacks, they will begin adding simulations of these attacks to employee training programs to ensure staff members know how to prevent breaches from occurring in the future.
As Baroan points out, this type of training is already fairly commonplace as businesses test employees by leaving infected USB thumb drives laying in the parking lot, conducting test phone calls to see if staff members will give out classified information over the phone, and testing email phishing schemes on employees to make sure they are using secure email practices.
Other experts believe that certain IT tools and technologies will gain prominence as time goes on. Will Buchanan, president of Philantech3 Consulting Group, predicts that Active Threat Hunting will become a growing trend. As the name implies, Active Threat Hunting is a proactive tool that enables IT technicians to identify any behavior on the company network that resembles a hacker’s behavior.
On the other hand, Eric Weast from ECW Network & IT Solutions believes that persistent VPNs and Firewalls will be the next big thing. As he accurately points out, most companies have dial-up VPNs at work but these don’t provide security for employees working from home or another location such as a public library or cafe. Without the added security, companies are in danger of data breaches as hackers can gain access to data as it moves to and from the company network. Granted, a growing number of companies are using cloud servers and SaaS platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS; even so, an ideal scenario for businesses that want to protect company data from malicious third parties would be to set up a virtual firewall appliance in a cloud server and ensure their employees are connected to it every single time they do company business outside the corporate office.
Getting Started
What does the future of cybersecurity look like? According to the experts, there will be a greater emphasis on cybersecurity than ever before. This includes more cybersecurity training, improved cybersecurity training, and testing techniques, and increased used of active threat testing and VPN network security to protect companies from cyberattacks. The good news is, all these tools are currently available to businesses throughout the United States. Companies that do not have the manpower or know-how to provide employee cybersecurity training and testing can get the expert help they need from an IT managed service provider that specializes in cybersecurity.
IT services not only specialize in serving SMBs but even tailor their services to meet a company’s needs at a cost a company owner can afford. With professional help and assistance, companies can start today putting a premium on cybersecurity, using the same tips and tools that large corporations use to keep data safe and secure while providing employees with the tools and technologies they need to do their jobs quickly and easily.
