#DTX Tech Predictions Mini Summit: Focus on Security When Expanding Digital Presence

The digital shift emanating from the COVID-19 crisis can serve to enhance workforce productivity, but organizations must be careful to ensure this does not threaten their security and make them more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, according to a panel speaking during the Tech Predictions Mini Summit.

The speakers firstly outlined how the shift to remote working and increased take up of digital technologies is having positive impacts for many organizations. James Maunder, CIO at The London Clinic, noted that “productivity equates to delivery of value and, in some senses, we’ve seen an increase.”

Similarly, at the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD), COVID-19 was viewed as an opportunity to accelerate a modernization program that was already in the making. “Part of that was the move to a mobile-first view of the world – mobile-first in the battlefield, mobile-first in our normal everyday working lives,” explained Charlie Forte, CIO at the MOD. “So we’ve used the COVID experience to really accelerate the delivery of a mobile-first workforce, and if we hadn’t done, we would have been quite challenged in terms of supporting defense outputs.”

However, as has been well-documented over the past year, the move to remote working, where staff are increasingly operating outside the secure perimeters of corporate buildings, has offered more opportunities for cyber-criminals to launch attacks. Forte acknowledged: “The threats substantially increase as you move to forming most of your daily engagement activities on a remote basis rather than being in a building somewhere and all together.”

In his view, awareness education and training is just as important to mitigating the increased threat levels as improving organizations ..

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