tech42 President & Owner Featured on tecBRIDGE Radio

tech42 President & Owner Featured on tecBRIDGE Radio

Recently, Mike Pickreign was featured on the tecBRIDGE radio to discuss current trends and priorities in office technology and support. Mike talked about the company’s drive to provide innovative, best-in-class cybersecurity solutions that are the essence of our clients’ business operations.

As cyberattacks grow ever more destructive and widespread, business leaders must take a more involved approach to cybersecurity and recognize that prevention of data and security breaches is just as important as detection. In the interview with Don Webster, Mike examined the importance of tackling cybersecurity and the perspective business leaders can bring to the issue.

Every day provides an opportunity for business leaders to understand the alarming consequences of cyberattacks, the importance of taking a proactive approach, and the need for robust defenses. While most business leaders understand these needs, the incredible amount of responsibilities they have typically means cybersecurity is not always a priority.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, ransomware attacks, and zero-day exploits are all contributing to cybercrime damages. Despite the conversations around cybercrime, including the news headlines and the breach notifications, some businesses remain complacent. The risk is real and business leaders should not allow themselves to be abated into a sense of certainty.

Cybersecurity Must Be a Topic of Conversation

Any industry that evolves with the times at a slow pace quickly jumped into action as the COVID-19 pandemic forced the entire business world to make adjustments to how it operates. That trend will need to continue as cybersecurity should be at the forefront of business leaders’ minds moving forward. With more determined digital initiatives, businesses want to change their cyber strategies and invest more in cybersecurity.

Members of an Advisory Board or the Board of Directors are always concerned about their business’s bottom line and returns on investment, but cybersecurity must be a part of the conversation during these strategic initiatives. In many cases, there is resistance to cybersecurity measures, and this often stems from the belief that focusing on cybersecurity measures will become a barrier to competing objectives.

Many businesses and organizations have always been under the impression that cybersecurity is just an added obstacle, one that disrupts the flow of business and limits employees’ freedoms. Cybersecurity strategies will only be obstacles when the cybersecurity strategy is not properly integrated from the start. IT security should be treated as part of core business activities and should be discussed at strategic and project levels. When cybersecurity becomes a late topic of conversation, it will indeed become an obstacle because it was not integrated sooner.

At tech42 LLC, we know that cybersecurity buyers are looking for new and improved solutions. If we look at what once worked in cybersecurity, it was the simple solutions that addressed the various areas of risk – such as firewalls and antivirus software. While that may have worked in the past, things have changed significantly. The market, threats, complexities, and regulations have all changed.

These are much more complex than they used to be. What worked for an organization in 2021 is not what worked for them in 1990 or 2000. So, we are on a mission to build solutions that will allow us to address every area of cybersecurity. If you look at any of the established standards in cybersecurity, such as incident response to risk assessment to cybersecurity policies to awareness, our team is prepared to tackle questions and concerns in every area.

We understand that even the smallest organization needs a cybersecurity team and a strategy, but many businesses either don’t know where to look for the resources, feel as if they can’t afford the resources, or they can’t retain them. A change in cyber strategy will help, especially as every industry encounters an enlarged attack surface as organizations ramp up IT deployments and the adoption of cloud solutions.

Why Should Cloud Security Be Important to Businesses?

With the adoption of cloud environments and agile processes, many critical assets now reside outside of an organization’s traditional security perimeter.

This traditional ‘castle-and-moat’ network security model– which assumes that any security threat will come from outside an organization, has created many problems. Many organizations are shifting their focus away from on-premise firewalls and looking at the protection of their data and applications, wherever they are being housed.

Governments around the world have called for strict measures that guarantee cloud security for customers and end-users. Cloud security, government regulations, and end-user privacy all play an important part in an organization’s IT strategy and investments.

Given that any lapses in security will lead to security and data breaches, and considering that, in this insurance context, the data that businesses have access to is personal and valuable, business leaders need reliable solutions that can mitigate risks and protect the business and the sensitive and valuable data stored within their systems and on external networks.

Cloud services have introduced a new wave of functions and processes in how data businesses and organizations use data. If a data breach occurs due to a failure to meet regulations and compliance requirements, that business may incur substantial fines and penalties. If a business fails to implement proper cybersecurity solutions to support their move to the cloud, there is an increasing risk that business’s cyber insurance carrier will release them for failure to comply with cybersecurity regulations.

Shifting to the cloud requires an incredible thought process, precision, and security when migrating operations from internal systems to cloud services. Moving to the cloud also means businesses and organizations will be increasing their attack surfaces. We know the type of unfortunate outcome that awaits businesses and organizations when their cloud databases are targeted by attackers – it leaves data dangerously exposed and unprotected.

Prioritizing a Proactive Approach

We know that many organizations are under the impression that a cybersecurity threat or attack would never happen to them because it has never happened before. Many businesses and organizations are under the impression that their employees are not clicking suspicious links or opening phishing emails, so they don’t need to invest in cybersecurity training or education. Businesses and organizations will also turn to vendors and suppliers for the simple reason that they have never suffered a data breach, so it’s safe to do business with them.

A proactive cybersecurity strategy starts from the top. Prioritize cybersecurity prevention by implementing innovative technologies designed to stay ahead of emerging threats and attacks. Proactive cybersecurity is what you do before an attack. When your business establishes a proactive cybersecurity culture, it means you will be committed to prevention. This means your business or organization is investing in a strong defensive position, educating your employees, and planning for risks your business or organization has not encountered yet.

One of the goals of the conversation with Don is to spur conversation and share lessons learned from experiences the tech42 team has gained across the industry. Cybersecurity and the cloud are big topics, and I think they are things we don’t talk about enough. For more information on cybersecurity, clouds, and cloud security, reach out to us today.