The world has become largely digitized over the past few years, and more reliant on technology than ever. In 2018, Forbes wrote that humans created 2.5 quintillion bytes (2.5M Terabytes) of data every day, and 90% of the world’s entire data was created within just the previous two to three years. That same year, Cisco noted in a report that 94% of all workloads would be run in some form of cloud environment by 2021.
Today, as contractors have spent most of 2020 deploying the latest technologies to work remotely and social distance amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, even those lofty figures might seem understated. Technology, and especially the cloud, have been vital to businesses’ continuity efforts. So too is securing the data that flows through these platforms.
Even before COVID-19, technology’s rapid growth meant that data security has become a higher priority—both in personal lives and in business. It wasn’t all that long ago that data security was something that many took for granted. The idea of someone stealing money, compromising identities or hijacking files was reserved to physical crimes like burglaries, muggings or larceny. Today, while technology opens up new doors of opportunity, it can also expose more risk if the proper safeguards aren't in place.
With COVID-19 ushering in a new reality, companies across all industries—and their IT infrastructures—are adapting to be agile to allow employees to work from home, while striving to ensure critical company data is protected.
In April, VMware Carbon Black noted that data security attacks like ransomware were up 148% since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but fewer of those attacks are successful thanks to heightened data security technologies. The pandemic has forced companies’ IT departments to take a closer look at their data security safeguards. Here are some other figures to consider:
Protecting the New Norm
Contractors that rely on lots of data to facilitate complex construction projects are among the many businesses that can often be targets of cyber criminals. Multiple projects, using many different applications and hundreds, if not thousands of workers entering data can provide plenty of potential doors of opportunity for cyber criminals to knock on. So, how do contractors ensure these doors stay locked? It begins with knowing what to look for.
Here are three common cybersecurity threats that businesses face every day:
Thankfully, there are ways to protect against these threats. Most companies doing legitimate business have safeguards in place to protect their clients from cybersecurity hacks and legions of cybersecurity experts are further helping companies by staying on top of the latest schemes and exposing weaknesses in organizations before the criminals do.
With many businesses moving to the cloud—including leading construction companies—the weaknesses of yesterday are being replaced with stronger security and protective measures.
Generally, storing data and working in the cloud is safer than with on-premise software that consistently needs updating to provide the latest security protections. So long as cloud software vendors are providing consistent high levels of security on their end, those safeguards are then automatically rolled out to clients. It’s also important to understand these platforms have some excellent security tools built-in, but they are only effective if deployed properly, so leveraging secure configuration expertise is paramount for successful implementation.
Regardless, even the most robust security technology cannot prevent the inevitable human factor, and contractors should take their own steps to ensure consistent data security practices are employed throughout their organizations. Here are some strategic approaches:
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