The stakes are
getting a lot higher in cybersecurity. It's no longer just about a loss of
productivity and profitability. Your compromised network could become a public safety
risk.
Cybersecurity fears continue to grow as the digital
revolution embeds itself in new parts of society every day. Here are the three
things you need to know about cybersecurity in world that is increasingly
dominated by mobile technology and the Internet of Things.
1. Mobile is now the
standard
For the past decade and a half, mobile devices were bolted
onto a company's IT strategy because the devices themselves were what
professionals used when they were traveling or between times when they were
sitting at a computer. Today, there's a lot more you can do on mobile and so
mobile usage continues to skyrocket. As a result, every company needs to treat
mobile like a central component of its IT, data, and cybersecurity policies.
2. IoT complexity
brings tremendous risk
In the same way mobile devices changed the game for IT
security over the past two decades, the Internet of Things is changing it
again. IoT is connecting a greater diversity of devices to the corporate
network, and with that brings much greater complexity and risk. And the scale
is incredible. There are now over 3 billion smartphones in use in the world.
There are already 8 billion IoT devices and we're still at the very beginning
of the growth curve. That number will climb past 25 billion by 2020.
3. Cybersecurity is
now a public safety concern
When mobile security became an issue, the biggest concerns
were data leakage and loss of productivity and profitability. As IoT connects
more parts of the world to the internet, it creates a greater attack surface
for rogue players. That means public infrastructure like stoplights, bridges,
water facilities, and power plants can now be attacked. And, vulnerable
endpoints on your organization's network could be compromised to launch the
attack. In other words, the stakes of the game in cybersecurity are higher than
they've ever been and they will only get bigger in the years immediately ahead.
Source: ZDNet
