Mark Skelton

To tackle cyber security effectively, we need to find new ways to meet the cyber challenges facing all of us. As CTO for Telefónica Tech UK&I, I regularly speak to organisations that find it hard to know what they need in today’s fast-evolving threat landscape. Many others, despite using ‘a proliferation of’ cybersecurity tools, are simply overwhelmed. To maintain cyber resilience and keep employees, data, and systems safe, it is important to consider the following 3 points when assessing your cyber security strategy. 1. Can you move fast enough? Business leaders must evaluate the capacity of IT teams and stress-test for when things go wrong. How long would it take your IT team to spot a breach, for example? Would this time put many of the team offline and affect business operations? Downtime is highly costly for businesses, with estimates of loss of income at more than $5,600 per minute*, depending on company size and outage time. That’s why the speed of detection is what many customers are now focussing on; however, few companies have 24x7, always-on security professionals at hand that can swiftly detect and remediate. And this slow response time can cost businesses crippling amounts, especially when it comes to large-scale attacks. Many IT teams are unsustainably stretched – which the numbers only back up. According to Government divs, half (50%) of all businesses have just one person managing or running cyber security in-house; even among large businesses, the average cyber team comprises just two to three people. Defending businesses against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats is an incredibly demanding task; as a result, teams struggle to stay on top of important security practices such as vulnerability management and 24/7 network monitoring. Cyber Security Where is your company on the cybersecurity journey? April 20, 2022 2. Do you have sufficient resources? Identifying, deploying, and updating several best-of-breed technologies into one comprehensive security position takes time, effort, and continuous resources. This is why many under-staffed CISOs, CTOs, and technical managers opt for smarter, security-as-a-service alternatives. Security consulting and managed services aim to take a proactive approach, learning from threat intelligence and the customer base, to help customers stay in step with the changing threat landscape. To ensure applications and data held within Cloud and data centre solutions are better protected, implementing a zero-trust approach will be high on all business agendas for the next 12 months. Similarly, the Gartner-coined Cyber Security Mesh approach is becoming a business priority, and one of the principals for ensuring your Cyber Security ecosystem can work harmoniously together to protect against threats. This approach further underlines how our thinking needs to evolve beyond point solutions to consider how security tools need to work together to provide the ultimate protection. However, with the greater adoption of cloud technologies, continued hybrid working, and the increasing cost of preventing cyber threats, only organisations who can access specialist expertise and advanced cyber security solutions will be able to successfully adopt these new security principles. 3. Do you have the right expertise? Governments and cyber security bodies across the world have flagged the growing cyber security skills gap and the pressing need for more cyber skills training across the board. For example, ENISA, the EU's transnational cybersecurity agency, says despite the number of cyber security graduates doubling in the next two years, cyber skills will remain in short supply.*** The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, meaning that managing cyber security requires specialist knowledge and skills that must be continuously refined and updated to reflect the complex threat landscape. To compound the skills shortage further, companies are also being challenged to think differently about how they protect their assets. For example, concepts like Zero Trust requires a cultural shift in order for design and architecture solutions to be successful. This further emphasises the need to seek external expertise to carry out dedicated security training, especially if already-stretched IT teams are expected to take this on as an additional task. Cyber Security AI of Things The impact of cybersecurity attacks on SMEs and corporates December 6, 2021 A Way Forward To limit the risks posed to both businesses and the well-being of IT staff, effective cyber security and risk management requires dedicated professionals that are specifically trained, able to continuously identify new threats and maintain digital resilience across your entire organisation – from your infrastructure, your apps, and data, to your network and endpoints. By outsourcing security, businesses can gain access to a breadth of specialised expert knowledge, as well as an external viewpoint and fresh perspectives, which are essential when making any changes in or additions to IT infrastructure as businesses grow. Sources: Understanding the UK Cyber Skills UK Labour Market Understanding the Cybersecurity Skills Gap in the EU The Cost of IT Downtime. The 20.com Featured photo: Dell / Unsplash.

Optimising cloud-based technologies and enabling a seamless blend between remote and office work will be the key to hybrid working success. To achieve this, any effective hybrid working formula needs to consider 3 key areas: connectivity, cyber security, and digital inclusion. Connectivity With hybrid working emerging as the standard model for many of us, businesses need to ensure that connecting from any location is as smooth as possible, and exchanges with colleagues, whether in an office or working from home are seamless. If not, it could have a serious effect on collaboration among teams. It can also lead to unequal employee representation, with some people’s thoughts, ideas or opinions being overlooked. Smart meeting rooms will therefore be an important investment as organisations adopt hybrid working. In this new fluid workspace, hardware and software need to integrate to create a productive meeting experience for participants, whether they are joining the meeting from the office or remotely. Future Workplace Collaborative solutions to address the challenge of hybrid working September 7, 2022 New tools are appearing every day to complement these spaces. For example, Microsoft’s employee experience platform Viva, and intelligent collaboration devices such as Surface Hubs or Poly Meeting Room solutions can seamlessly record and take notes during meetings. Linking these tools together can create a seamless working environment. In the not-too-distant future, we will also see Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) integrate into meeting room spaces to take that experience to a next level and give hybrid collaboration another dimension. Cyber Security Many of us are now working more regularly from home, and while this has many benefits, it can also open the door to new Cyber Security threats. For those looking to offer employees hybrid working in the long term, addressing staff and data security is paramount. Creating Cyber Security resilience involves several elements, one of which is staff education and ongoing training. Many admit that employees are their biggest weakness in IT security. So, providing education on the risks out there and how to spot them is an essential part of any strategy. CYBER SECURITY The human factor: a key element of cyber security September 20, 2021 This training should be regularly updated to represent the changing conditions of the workplace. Organisations need to continually adapt to keep employees safe, and once a cyber defence has been deployed, it’s then crucial to regularly check the security measures are effective. This continuous monitoring is where many organisations struggle to keep pace with the thousands of updates each week, which is why, many CISOs, CTOs and business leaders are deciding not to go it alone but preferring to outsource cyber security to professional teams. Digital Inclusion As more of have shifted to home or hybrid working, one of the casualties has been workplace culture and a sense of community among workers. Behavioural analytics tools can play a key role to ensure remote working is enjoyable and sustainable for everyone There are also concerns that employee wellbeing and job satisfaction are also more difficult to track in a remote team. This is where behavioural analytics tools can play a key role, by analysing behavioural patterns to understand employee activity and help ensure remote working is enjoyable and sustainable for everyone within the modern workplace. Cyber Security Cloud Secure Digital Workplace: chronicle of a foretold (and necessary) evolution October 19, 2022 The insights that are unlocked by this technology will be invaluable, as they can also provide businesses with insights into employee working patterns. When these tools are combined with data sources, such as networks and smart meeting rooms, it provides business leaders with an all-important overview of employee engagement. From here, it’s possible to evaluate the true feeling of employees and understand if anyone does not feel included, and why. Crucially business leaders must remember that there is not a one-size-fits-all method of implementing hybrid working. The process involves a significant amount of evaluation and learning. As with every IT investment, you must secure the foundations of security and connection, and do not forget to include your team in the process.