Rutter Networking Technologies Blog

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from the Essential Guide to IT Security Strategy.

Businesses in the digital age can no longer rely on disconnected security tools, alongside robust protocols and policies, to avoid increasing IT security threats. The development of a proactive and multidimensional strategy for securing data and your organization’s IT infrastructure is built on well-developed security policies, and overall strategy. However, the first step toward developing that security strategy is to conduct a thorough and in-depth threat assessment.

According to the Cisco Cloud Index, 68 percent of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers by 2020, which is a 35 percent jump from 2015. While that growth is impressive, what it doesn’t say is that many businesses are still trying to figure out the process of moving to the cloud. AWS, which currently holds about 40 percent of the market, clearly has a lot to offer. What is not as clear are the hidden costs of moving infrastructure to the cloud.

With the recent Spectre and Meltdown flaws sending a wave of disruption across IT and all business communities, the scope of the problem continues to unfold. Either one or both of the flaws are present in Intel chips from the last 15 years embedded in countless processors running PCs, servers, and phones.

According to Gartner’s Top 10 Cloud Security Predictions, by the year 2020, a third of all successful attacks on businesses will be against their shadow IT resources. Businesses can no longer ignore the risks of shadow IT and must take preventative steps against it.

According to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2016 Predictions, at least half of IT spending will be cloud-based by 2018 and grow to as much as 70 percent of all IT infrastructure spending (all software, services, and technology) by 2020. That growth is being largely driven by infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which has transformed the way IT departments around the world function and has changed the way business is done.

Everyone, by now, knows that backing up important files is one of the most important steps to take to reduce IT downtime.

According to the Verizon 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, 51 percent of breaches included some form of malware. While malware in all of its forms is a pervasive threat, what most businesses should be focusing on is that there are numerous cyber threats that they need to guard against.

According to the recent Riverbed Technology survey of 1,000 IT leaders from across the world, 97 percent say legacy technology is holding them back. Even in the digital business era, legacy applications are a reality for most organizations from small and medium-sized businesses to enterprises. The reality is that those businesses that have not reached the tipping point where they can take advantage of the latest technologies are facing numerous risks every day. Here are just five of the most prevalent risks that dated technology can bring to businesses.

Cybersecurity has become a frequently used term in business these days.

Whether you hear it in the news or in a meeting, most people are aware that businesses everywhere, and every size, are being targeted by cyber criminals. Just recently companies such as Equifax, Netflix, Sonic, and Yahoo! found their names in the headlines as the latest victims. However, the smaller companies that are also victims hardly get a mention even though they account for 43 percent of all incidents, which cost them an average of $879,582 in damages.  

Migration projects are often overwhelming to a business that has made the decision to move from one platform to another. Migrating to Office 365 is no different, even if your organization is already in the Microsoft ecosystem.