Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Thomas LaRock, Head Geek, SolarWinds
Back to the Basics – Avoiding Disaster Through Good Cyberhygiene
Over the years, we’ve seen new strategies appear to manage cyberattacks. But while cybersecurity has gotten more sophisticated, so have cybercriminals.
Whether it’s spear-phishing, malware, or ransomware, criminals find new ways to attack and compromise businesses. In 2020, to combat these threats and avoid low-hanging-fruit vulnerabilities, organizations will realize the need to prioritize best practices for good cyberhygiene and training for everyone from entry-level staff to C-suite leaders. This includes simple employee best practices, such as leveraging password managers and account takeover prevention tools, to following the 3-2-1 backup rule (three copies of a data set in two different formats and one copy must be stored offsite) to critical end-user trainings to prevent ransomware and phishing attacks.
In the coming year, I also expect to see an evolution in the way we think about cybersecurity: moving from more of a hardware security focus to a broader digital security focus, to encompass the swath of personal data existing online and potentially being hacked or breached. We’re already beginning to see tech pros’ acknowledgement of this changing landscape with a greater focus on security-based skillsets. The recent SolarWinds® IT Trends Report 2019: Skills for Tech Pros of Tomorrow revealed 54% of respondents considered SIEM and threat intelligence the second most important technology for career development by weighted rank.
Hackers, viruses, and intelligent malware are all part of today’s hostile cybersecurity landscape, and the adoption of good cyberhygiene will help organizations better prevent and prepare for security threats.
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About the Author
THOMAS LA ROCK, Head Geek
LaRock has over 20 years of IT experience holding roles such as programmer, developer, analyst, and database administrator. He is a Microsoft Certified Master, VMware vExpert, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and a ten-time Microsoft Data Platform MVP.
LaRock has spent much of his career focused on data and database administration, which led to his election as a Technical Evangelist for Confio Software in 2010, where his research and experience helped create the initial versions of the software now known as SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA).
