Why business connectivity is the key to success
Why business connectivity is the key to success Article Publish Date: We live in a rapidly changing world. People say that all the time, of course, but at the moment it is demonstrably true, and nowhere more so than with business technology. The Covid pandemic acted as a catalyst. According to a McKinsey survey at the time, business leaders said the pandemic accelerated their digital transformation strategies by between three and four years. Additionally, the share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios accelerated by seven years. The technology that businesses adopted over those 18 months to meet the challenges of COVID-19 have become adopted into an integral part of everyday life. By some estimates, digital transformation has progressed more in the last year or so than in the previous five. Redefining Success The upshot is that many businesses can no longer operate without VoIP, video conferencing or cloud storage. Slick e-commerce operations and online customer services have become routine, regardless of business sector or size. Some of these recent innovations started as sticking plaster solutions for the challenges of lockdown, but they’ve quickly morphed to meet the long-term challenges of equipping permanent remote and hybrid workforces. By doing this, they are improving efficiency and productivity for businesses, but also raising new concerns. If your digital requirements have changed, is your connectivity infrastructure robust enough to cope? Or to put it another way, stuttering video calls and frozen file downloads are no longer acceptable. At the same time, employees need to be able to work as easily and efficiently away from the office as they can in it. There’s no longer an excuse for underwhelming digital experiences. Your technology needs to meet the requirements of a new world of work to drive growth, encourage collaboration as well as meet customer demand and expectations. The foundations of digital transformation To achieve this, your business’s connectivity infrastructure must lay the robust groundwork necessary for constructing a digital-centric future. We’re all doing a lot more online today than ever before. But thanks to that increased digital reliance, the consequences of an underpowered technology stack are much more serious now than they were previously. The risks of poor infrastructure If you lack the proper digital infrastructure, you stand to lose the potential business-improving advantages offered by the most recent communication and productivity technology. Without a reliable infrastructure, you risk internet outages and bottlenecks that throttle data, freeze applications, restrict cloud adoption, and hold your business back. The latest business-enhancing technologies – whether cloud computing, big data or the Internet of Things (IoT) – rely on robust connectivity. Fast efficient internet connectivity is the key to super-smooth video conferencing, fast file downloads and efficient customer service; it drives your e-commerce operation and hybrid working model. Trustack – Your connectivity experts With so many demands, it can be an intimidating topic to approach. That’s where Trustack comes in. Our connectivity experts can ensure you have the speed and bandwidth you need to meet your current business needs and future ambitions. Want to learn more about business connectivity? As a business, choosing the right connectivity is one of the most important business decisions you can make. Our Business Connectivity Guide will help you understand the options you have available. Get your business on the front foot Share the article to your socials About the Authors Connect on Linkedin Spotlighted Articles See all insights
Your Journey to a Stronger Security Posture
Your journey to a Stronger security posture Article Publish Date: A report from the World Economic Forum has found that cyber security is among one of the major emerging risks to the global economy. The report found there was a 435% increase in ransomware in 2020 and that attacks are becoming more widespread and sophisticated to compromise vulnerable targets. Businesses need more protection now than ever before and the shift to remote working since 2020 has left many businesses vulnerable and is one of the biggest factors that has led to the growing threat landscape. At Trustack, our best-in-class cyber security management solutions can help you protect your data both on-premise and in the cloud. In this edition of Trustack Talks: Our Technical Director Russell Henderson, shares his top tips to guide our customers on their journey to hardening their security posture. 1. Prevention The saying goes “Prevention is better than cure” and that’s exactly what we try to ensure when talking to our clients about a multi-layered security approach and the managed solutions we offer. Having the latest generation security in place from the edge of your network through to the central applications and services both on premises and in the cloud can help strengthen your defences. From immutable backups both on premise and in the cloud together with server and endpoint protection, AV and AM with advanced threat hunting and correlation across the estate, a hosted/ managed SIEM or Security Operations Centre and disaster recovery solution, this multi-layered approach to your security solutions will work in tandem to detect threats and protect your business. 2. Cure A truly air-gapped and immutable copy of your backup data is really the only form of cure in today’s world. With manufacturers announcing vulnerabilities weekly, it’s futile to expect a business to be able to class itself as secure from cyber threats. Between a multi-layered security approach and a strict and comprehensive patch routine, the best you’ll achieve is limiting the speed or breadth an exploit can reach in your environment. So, the only true cure is a known guarantee of restoring your data and systems to a known working state as quickly as possible with the use of immutable backups. There will be disruption to your business as you will suffer some data loss following a breach, with the prevention layers deep scanning systems to prove they are clear of threats, but ultimately you will call upon the ‘cure’ to recover your data. 3. General best practice With human error playing a big role in many security breaches, it is imperative that businesses keep on top of employee training to ensure they understand the risks, are better equipped to spot threats such as a phishing attempt and also to help them adopt best practices to ensure they behave in a data-secure way. In addition to training, it is important to define a robust data handling policy that employees adhere to at all times. Areas that may be included are user access control permissions, best practices for data protection such as encryption and two-factor authentication and the process employees should follow to securely dispose of data. 4. Self-reliance It’s sometimes surprising to hear how dependent a client has become on their third-party IT provider, for example not being able to manage and drive a solution that has been deployed for them. This can sometimes be their larger security platforms, which admittedly can be complex. However, I see this as a big risk. Security vulnerabilities are being found at an increasing rate; exploits are being developed at the same speed if not faster. I can see at some stage a large exploit attack against a major vendor vulnerability resulting in third-party service companies becoming swamped. Imagine a major Microsoft vulnerability being exploited that corrupts a current server operating system in a major way. No third-party IT company is geared up to facilitate full system recovery or threat defending for the majority of their client base simultaneously. Whether they are a global supplier with tens of thousands of clients or a small local supplier with a couple of hundred clients, they will have both scaled their business to accommodate the usual run rate from their clients, not to accommodate a deluge of large-scale protracted defence or recovery services that can be delivered to all clients simultaneously. In this scenario having the skills to drive and manage your security solutions yourself will become critically important, being able to self-service against the exploit or threat initially until your third-party provider can respond to you could be the difference between being completely dead in the water or being able to continue to operate at a reduced capacity for a few days. 5. Listen to advice A lot of the time people think they are just being sold to, but if you have a trusted provider of knowledge telling you that you need to do something, you probably need to do it. Listen to them. Good quality consultancy companies should be bringing new ideas, best practices and solution improvements to their client base continually, the reason being, that technology solutions and requirements are continually evolving. What was suitable for purpose not so long ago is probably now either seen as too slow, too cumbersome, too inefficient or not secure enough. However, I have had first-hand experiences of people who don’t invest in their security estate over the years with the mentality of “it will never happen to me” or “who would want to get their hands on our data?” The fact is, if someone compromising your data stops your business from functioning and can earn ransom money, they want your data. The tools available to attackers these days make it easier than ever to exploit one of the many vulnerabilities that continue to surface 6. Security-first mindset Retrofitting security around a solution that has already been designed, or worse still already deployed is harder work than factoring it in from the