Putting Technology to work

The benefits of Technology are of both tangible and intangible variety that enable businesses to thrive, and while we have come to take gadgets like laptops and phone for granted, they are vital for day to day operations.

There are downsides to technology as well. When turned around for the wrong purposes, the

multitude of data breaches that have transpired in the 21 st century underline the perils of

technology when technology goes wrong. In 2013 Yahoo became the victims of a staggering

data breach that affected a whopping 3 billion user accounts! Investigations later revealed that

that specific user details had been stolen and that the orchestrators were state sponsored.

Information theft included usernames, email addresses, contact numbers, dates of birth and of

course their login credentials. The repercussions of this breach meant that Yahoo had to knock

350 million dollars off its sales price to Verizon – the reputational damage was unaccounted for.

Technology is never perfect.

“Technology is a byproduct of doing business in the digital age. Likewise, business operations have changed dramatically since technology is now at its forefront as well.”

The frequency of online attacks has increased at an alarming rate and had become an omnipresent threat for businesses. However, one can argue that available technologies also provide protection against such attacks. Developers can use technology to create cyber security defense systems that safeguard businesses against threats.

A balancing Act

It is crucial that technology is secure but also convenient, the capacity of a business to accomplish more. For instance, they can reach a greater number of customers in lesser time. As such, they can also serve more customers than ever before. Constant protection is inevitable, and data should always be secure regardless of whether they are working from their office spaces, remotely, a desktop browser or through a mobile device. Guiding principles for a secure business computing environment should cover without limitation to the following;

• Develop standards of practice, procedures for personal and shared resources to mitigate cybersecurity risk

• Raise security awareness within organizations and adopt Multifactor authentication (MFA) where possible

• Build redundancies to avoid single points of failure on all critical elements of business including employees, servers, technologies, and strategies – backup data continuously

• Develop an approach for continuous mitigation and diagnostics

“It is crucial that technology is secure but also convenient”

Get Inspired

Too often, the perceived costs of strong data security get in the way of taking low-burden but high-impact action to improve practices, and while the costs of poor practices can be hard to quantify, the risk to an organization is real. Tools like email, laptops, financial systems and sales tools don’t often seem important until they don’t work as intended. Getting business tech wrong will cost money and may even lead to the demise of the business.