Accelerate Magazine October 2020

WAUKESHA COUNTY BUSINESS ALLIANCE, INC. | WAUKESHA.ORG Digital transformation has been a steady evolution for decades, but 2020 happenings have catapulted us into employing technology to do almost everything: communicate and connect for work, health care, education, other services; shopping and dining; entertainment and so on. Technology is the very thing that is helping many businesses survive, compete at scale, and innovate; however, if mismanaged, technology can also be the very thing exposing businesses to substantial risk. Even when operating in “normal” times, business and society are demanding access to more information from more places in more meaningful ways. Satisfying these demands directly impacts the security of: • Connected devices • Data sources • Automated systems and processes • Third-party access (customers, vendors, partners, etc.) Adding in the disruption of the pandemic, natural disasters, and other events have created the perfect scenario for opportunistic cybercriminals to gain access to networks. The uncertainty and chaos we have been navigating since early in the year has a lot to do with the alarming statistics captured by CrowdStike. “In the six months from January to June, OverWatch observed more hands-on-keyboard intrusions than all of 2019,” says CrowdStrike in their 2020 Threat Hunting Report (see chart). The persistence of this year’s disruption is a catalyst for innovation and risk – threat levels continue to rise while businesses continue to use technology to pivot. So how do we use technology to innovate while maintaining security? Innovating The technology opening doors for companies (or, for some, keeping the doors open) are those that: • Digitize the client experience (example: e-commerce and remote service delivery tools) • Integrate and sync systems and devices (example: IoT sensors and RFID tracking) • Aggregate real-time data across the organization – bonus points for external sources (example: cross- department dashboards and geographic information systems – GIS) • Support a distributed workforce (example: cloud infrastructure and collaboration tools) • Automate repetitive or remote tasks (example: data entry, customer service, and email marketing) 2020 ACCELERATES DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND CYBERATTACKS HOW TO BALANCE INNOVATION AND RISK SCOTT BRYS Chief Technology Officer, Superior Support Resources 24