Looking back, 2020 will be remembered as the year everything changed. From the way we shop to the way we socialize to the way we work, for most people, no corner of life was left unaltered by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For businesses, 2020 ushered in broad-scale changes to the data protection landscape, and we will be grappling with these changes possibly for years.
When millions of employees went from in-office to working from home practically overnight, IT teams had no time to stand up adequate security infrastructure. With little remote worker endpoint security, unsecured home network connections, remote access vulnerabilities, and widespread usage of personal devices for work, no one was surprised by the surge in data breaches.
As the pandemic wore on, many businesses had to make tough staffing decisions. As a result, there were more than 2.3 million layoffs in 2020, which is a 289 percent increase over 2019.
Mass layoffs create huge data security risk. If employees aren’t properly offboarded—that is, permissions revoked and accounts disabled—there is a chance data could be deleted or stolen. For example, a disgruntled former employee might decide to go out in a blaze of glory by erasing or corrupting mission-critical files, or a cybercriminal could get access to an unused account and work their way up the network to the good stuff.
Cybercriminals know that 90 percent of data breaches are caused by human error. With most of the world’s workforce extra-distracted by COVID-19, it is even easier to trick users into clicking bad links in pandemic news stories or opening malicious attachments in emails that look like official notices from trusted healthcare organizations.
Consumers are becoming more and more protective of their personal data every year. GDPR and HIPAA regulations have been around for a while now, but in 2020, more governments and legislative bodies began taking steps to implement new consumer privacy laws and increase compliance regulations at state and national levels.
Although it is too soon to call the present day the “post-COVID-19 era,” at least we can say we’re post-2020. And as we move toward whatever comes next for businesses, there are several ways we can maximize data protection in today’s data-driven business environment.
Digital transformation got a jump start in 2020 and, as a result, a lot of companies are turning to the cloud for data protection for their new cloud-based applications as well as their on-premises data and systems. These are a few of the many ways businesses are using the cloud as part of their data protection strategy:
As cybercriminals become more savvy, passwords no longer afford the same protection they once did. Today’s businesses are moving away from traditional login credentials and adopting more sophisticated identity and access management best practices, including:
Demand for consumer data privacy and protection is expected to increase over the next few years as more states, regions, and countries implement stringent laws and stiffer penalties for noncompliance.
One key thing to watch in 2021 is the California Privacy Rights Act, which, among other things, increases restrictions on the sale and sharing of consumers’ personal information. It is also important to keep an eye on how the end of the Brexit transition period impacts data protection regulations.
Security experts are predicting an active year for ransomware operators. We can expect to see an increase in some new and evolving ransomware tactics and technologies, including:
Whether you’re battling a ransomware attack, cleaning up after a natural disaster, or recovering from a system upgrade gone wrong, overcoming major challenges requires proactively planning for both business resiliency and business continuity.
Although business continuity and business resilience sound like they serve the same purpose, it is critical to have a plan for both.
Business continuity is the company strategy for quickly re-establishing critical business operations after a disruption.
Business resilience is all the processes and policies that enable your organization to adapt to a changing environment by anticipating, preparing for, and responding to a disruption so the company can continue to meet business objectives.
In 2020, the world learned a valuable lesson about preparation and overcoming uncertainty. As we move into the next chapter, it is crucial that businesses apply these lessons learned and create new strategies for data protection. Download What's Next? Data Protection in a Post-2020 World to learn more ways to future proof your data security strategy.