By: Editorial Staff, Date: February 25th, 2021
Since March 2020, the reliance on tech for office productivity and general work has dramatically skyrocketed. Due to a pandemic’s requirement for social distance, just about every reasonable tech tool in the workplace has been pushed, stressed, redirected, and repurposed to make remote work a reality. And, along with all the new connections and devices coming online in many networks, so did the number of vulnerabilities and opportunities for hacks, security risks, and cyberthreats. The SolarWind hack of the federal government might have been the biggest one in the spotlight in 2020, but it was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what occurred behind the scenes in thousands of corporations and businesses.
Pushing Back Against the Barbarians
Predictably, new defense resources and security practices came online just as fast out of necessity to keep networks safe with remote work. And new trends began to develop accordingly including data security at the information level, defense-in-depth layers, and zero trust strategies. What seemed like fringe security has now in 2021 become the standard expectation in tech security.
Nobody Gets a Free Pass
Zero trust was, prior to remote work, impossible at a practical level. A certain level of fault tolerance had to be in place to allow latitude for business flexibility, often with management pressure. Now, in 2021, nobody is fully trusted for access. Everyone is suspect until proven otherwise. This involved proactive verification of roles and identity all the time, with every transaction of entry. Dual authorizations and MFA became commonplace as a result.
Your Information Is Gold
Data integrity has become essential. With more and more information needing to be shared digitally to function remotely, the integrity of the data becomes essential for the work product based on it to be valid. Data transfer tools have become the main conduits for protection as well as verification of data being correct and uncorrupted or tainted. This will be essential for contingent productivity, compliance success, and verification. An entire industry of data validation has sprung up as a result and will continue to grow into 2021, particularly among decentralized organizations.
Defense-in-Depth Shelters
With many companies working with dozens or hundreds of partners within their network who are technically outside vendors, extranet advanced defenses become essential. Companies will need to invest more and more in developing their own authorized communities for their support and supply relationships without compromising their own intranet system. These layers make it harder for attackers to penetrate the core but still allow external partnerships to work in pre-approved zones on the perimeter of networks.
2020 changed the world socially, but 2021 will make those new tech security paths the new normal if not permanent already.
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