Securing Your Hybrid Workplace: Future Trends in Cybersecurity

By Michael Zawisza and the Prosperoware Team

Cyber-attacks, data breaches, and cybersecurity have taken center stage during the pandemic and will most likely increase in a post-pandemic world. Seeing as how we’re likely to grow even more digitized within the next handful of years, protecting our data and information will be a key investment for industries worldwide.

Here are some trends in cybersecurity to keep your eye on in 2021 and beyond.

Remote Work Driving Need for Provisioning & Governance

The past year has seen remote work become the new normal across many industries, evidenced by the remote workforce expanding from 3.4% of the economy to 42% in the U.S. alone following the pandemic. This trend isn’t localized to the United States, though. A recent study found that one-third of the global workforce is now remote. The same survey found that 72% of said workers would actually prefer if their employers would allow them to remain in a hybrid work from home model.

Furthermore, with over 80% of CEOs claiming their companies will retain a hybrid structure even after the pandemic, the truth of the matter remains — remote work is here to stay.

Organizations supercharged virtual collaboration through deploying platforms like Microsoft Teams, which experienced exponential growth in its user base.

With expansive digital transformation, comes a plethora of new possibilities, but this advancement also comes with potential roadblocks. Specifically, the reliance on virtual collaboration systems can lead to immense data chaos when systems are left ungoverned.

Companies must invest in provisioning and governance technology to control chaos and create logical locations for users to place data, ultimately improving adoption. Such technology will also aid risk management teams in applying the right security and minimization policies to make sure that organizations have implemented a need-to-know or Zero-Trust security framework.

Data Breaches a Growing Concern Among CEOs

While cybersecurity has always been an area of concern, it has taken on greater urgency during the pandemic. For good reason, too.

Cyber-attacks and data breaches ballooned the past year, as sophisticated hackers preyed upon companies during this vulnerable transition. In 2020 alone, the average data breach hit companies for $3.86 million. Within the last few months, we’ve already seen how attacks such as Solarwinds and the Microsoft Exchange hack can cause havoc on industries across the board. These larger attacks may start with government targets, but as more cybercriminals join the fray, private citizens and businesses are at risk as well.

A recent PWC poll shows that 47% of CEOs are “extremely concerned” about the rise of cyber threats in 2021 — just trailing the pandemic as the most frequent response at 52%. This is a major jump from 2020 in which the topic was fourth on the list at 33%.

Hackers often exploit disorganization and data chaos within companies. Proper governance and provisioning with rich custom metadata are key.

Applying critical business context through rich custom metadata allows your organization to keep track of who may or may not need access to data. It gives your risk management team the necessary context to apply proper security measures. Figuring out context manually is time consuming and prone to human error, exposing your organization to risk.

Prosperoware’s CAM platform is an automated approach to provisioning and governing across collaboration systems that saves time, eliminates human error, and mitigates data chaos.

AI and Automation Lead to Quicker Detection

The weakest element of any organization’s cybersecurity strategy is the human element. Hackers often take advantage of our natural curiosity through virus-laden emails, and even our general misunderstanding of proper data storage. If it sounds like we’ve been harping on this, it’s because we are often our own worst enemies in terms of keeping our data safe.

That’s why artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are key components in the future of cybersecurity.

One of the biggest issues with cyber-attacks is that they can take a tremendous amount of time to discover. Data breaches may go on for months before they are identified. By that time, your firm will likely have been hit for millions of dollars’ worth of data-theft and regulatory fines.

While we still may be a few years off from true AI integration, your organization can already take steps to combat potential breaches by automating provisioning and governance.

By investing in software, like CAM, you can also set up document archives through Azure and AWS so that your organization can quickly access its data even in case of a hack or outage. CAM creates a separate document archive so your operations don’t have to cease if a threat has been detected.

Prosperoware CAM: Provision, Classify, Protect, Move, Minimize

There’s no turning back the clock now in terms of digital transformation. The use of cloud networks and virtual collaboration systems like Teams are the new normal of remote work. It’s vital to prepare for the cybersecurity obstacles and challenges that will present themselves moving forward.

Our software, Prosperoware CAM empowers organizations to navigate and manage collaboration platforms with confidence and peace of mind. It enables your organization to provision projects, engagements, matters — whatever you may call them — across collaboration systems, automatically or through a human workflow.

CAM allows you to classify data through rich custom metadata, protect it with in depth access management and data protection policies, move data within and across systems to fulfill client and regulator requests, and set minimization policies or place content on litigation hold.

CAM integrates with various collaboration platforms, including Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, OneNote, Planner), file shares, iManage, NetDocuments, HighQ, and more to come.

CAM allows you to control chaos and minimize risks related to privacy and cybersecurity through:

• Automatic provisioning of workspaces, Teams, Channels, and folders from Project Portfolio Management, CRM etc., or through human workflow using templates
• Rich, custom metadata for project or document context
• Unified project directory for content location for end users and risk management teams
• Automatic provisioning of internal & external users, managing permissions, and integrating with ethical wall systems
• Data Loss Prevention including activity monitoring and bulk security & metadata changes
• Data protection by creating a separate archive of documents to access in case of incidents
• Minimizing data by setting data disposition policies or applying litigation hold