High Flyers: Secure Your Digital Future

Even sat here in this airport lounge waiting for a flight, I can hear how keen people from IT and non-IT backgrounds are to talk about the digital revolution. In particular, how this is changing the face of business. For me, it’s all about confronting the cybersecurity threats that businesses face too.

You could be forgiven for ignoring this challenge because you think that ‘digital’ isn’t new. Digital watches were en vogue back in the 1980s. Digital TV made its switch from analogue in most western countries five or more years ago. We’ve had PCs for 40 years, and the world wide web is over a quarter of a century old.

But what’s really new is how all the parts of our digital lives – both personal and work – have now joined up to create a seamless digital existence. That means opportunities and threats.

Look at air travel. I can find a flight, book it, pay for it, check-in and get a boarding pass – all 100% digitally. In fact, I can do it all through a mobile device while passing in and out of different Wi-Fi and cellular areas. Every part of my customer experience is defined by software and delivered over the Internet.

The airline’s view on the world has changed too. All of its business processes are now digitalised and automated, from pricing and ticketing to payment processing and even flight dispatch at the departure gate. This is done by taking internally facing systems and making
them interface to external customers and partners.

All of this increases the size of the so-called ‘threat surface’. Consider this: there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet by 2020, as the IoT phenomenon takes hold and individual users increase their appetite for multiple devices. But the new digital world is not just larger – it provides more hiding places and opportunities for attack by cybercriminals.

59% of organisations expect the number of security incidents to increase next year, and most of the current incidents (82%) involve compromised endpoints. At the same time, CIOs are bracing themselves for more digital processes and more data. More than half of these –
according to Gartner – are worried that the digital torrent is coming faster than they can cope.

So what is the solution? You might think that a business who is afraid of risk would be wise to reject the digital revolution and keep everything operating as normal. No new application integrations, no explosion in endpoints, no dynamic interface with mobile workers…

But rejecting digital innovation is even riskier to a business than embracing it. According to McKinsey Global Institute, organisations working at the digital frontier have two to three times faster profit margin growth. They are more relevant to their customers, more agile in the face of uncertainty and change. It’s why entrepreneurs today are almost all ‘digital entrepreneurs’.

And don’t forget that rejecting innovation is letting the cybercriminals win. It means being trapped.

Rejecting digital innovation is impossible anyway. The cards have already been dealt. We live in a consumer-driven society where the customer is king. The consumerisation of enterprise IT in the last five years shows how unstoppable the next changes will be.

Did you want to keep all your workers in the office? Did you want to prevent customers using social media to communicate with you? Did you want to stop your employees bringing their own mobile devices to use for work? No – you found a solution to address these and other
cybersecurity challenges.

The air travel experience is so easy to do, and so intuitive that I suddenly hate doing these things outside of a digital environment. It’s a bit like SatNav – take it away and people remember how much time and hassle it took to plan a route somewhere. Would you give up your Uber app to go back to hailing taxis on the street?

The latest evolution of CARM (Cyber Attack Remediation & Mitigation) from Exclusive Networks has a strong proposition for channel partners who want to set their enterprise customers free from fear. With the right approach, you don’t have to let security concerns limit
growth potential. With CARM solutions, businesses don’t have to be held back and prevented from innovating and digitalising.

The continual evolution of CARM allows it to provide the most up-to-date solution framework for the latest cybersecurity challenges. That means preparing for a digital tomorrow, as well as a digital today.

Once again we come back to the subject of change, and how important it is for channel partners to be equipped to prosper from new opportunities and not be left behind.

Now, where has my digital boarding pass, gone? I don’t want the next part of this journey to carry on without me.