In this day and age, cyber threats and data breaches are unfortunately on the rise. While we can imagine these issues as being just for large, vulnerable enterprises, every small and medium sized business is equally at risk. In fact, 65% of cyber-attacks are aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, and half of those companies go out of business in 6 months. For this reason, it is crucial that every IT professional understands best practices for maintaining and improving cyber security.
We hosted our first Thought Leadership Webinar of 2020 on March 5th in conjunction with Spiceworks titled: The Risks and Rewards of Proactive IT Support: 3 Bets you Can’t Afford Not to Make. Take a look at the recording here. On the call representing LogMeIn was Oksana Balytsky, our veteran Product Marketing Supervisor for Central, and Adam McDonald, Senior Manager of IT Services. We also had Richard Eid join, who is an IT Director for Woodlands Retirement Community in Virginia. The three panelists and host Justin talked through some crucial issues facing IT professionals and ways that they are handling IT security in the modern world.
This webinar was an excellent opportunity for IT professionals to share their knowledge related to cyber security, answering such questions as:
- Why are we seeing more Cyber attacks?
- How are IT professionals gambling with security?
- What should IT professionals start/stop/continue doing to keep their employees, clients, and companies secure?
We learned about a lot of trends developing in the IT Security world today, such as:
- Expanding remote workforce: remote workers and users are growing in number, and this dispersed remote workforce will become more of the norm in 2020 and beyond
- Cyber attacks on the rise globally: 61% of SMBs were targeted last year by attacks, and IT professionals are rightly concerned about Malware, Ransomware, and data breaches
- We have an IT Labor shortage:professionals are being asked to do more with less, and there will be 3.5 million unfilled cyber-security positions globally by 2021
They also discussed a few ways to address these issues:
- IT Teams can utilize RMM tools like LogMeIn Central to support and troubleshoot employee devices regardless of location
- Patch management and Antivirus management are essential tools to ensure programs and applications are up-to-date and protected against cyber threats
- With a labor shortage, IT Professionals need to use tools that can save them time and money so they can optimize resources, such as with an advanced RMM tool
Here are a few key takeaways:
- Proactive IT management is key: ensuring internal systems are secured, have up-to-date software, and are being monitored regularly keeps you safe
- Routine security training for employees can improve individual security habits to help the overall security of your business. Teach best practices!
- Monitor and manage your devices remotely so you can automate patch management, set alerts, analyze your endpoints and actively protect your IT environment – saving precious time and resources
Dig into these insights by watching the webinar – the recording can be found here: Link
(By Connor Kinkead, LogMeIn)
