Simplifying Processes Helps to Enable Acceleration and Resilience and Optimizes Your Resources
Over the past eight months, I’ve been impressed by the agility of so many companies to quickly pivot to new solutions and processes to address a distributed environment. Every company has become a technology company as they’ve accelerated digital transformation and introduced change to everything – from communication and collaboration, to how infrastructure is organized, to support huge shifts in business and operating models. Security teams have worked around the clock to protect systems, processes, and data while maintaining productivity and driving competitive advantage.
As we look ahead, we know that COVID isn’t going away any time soon and that the current remote work environment will continue. Not simply out of necessity, but also because many employees and employers find it is working well for them and makes good business sense. Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently, following examples from other technology companies. But even across critical infrastructure sectors like finance, manufacturing, oil and gas, energy, mining and chemicals, companies are planning for hybrid working environments. They’ve seen their operational technology (OT) environments could be supported, at least partially, through remote workers, and some have even stated company performance has improved.
We also can expect that adversaries will continue to increase threat activity against all critical infrastructure, as they seek to take advantage of an expanding attack surface and legacy devices, which are now being connected to the internet but were never designed to withstand internet-related security threats. A few months ago, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert stating, “We are in a state of heightened tensions and additional risk and exposure” across OT and control systems, which are critical to operations and therefore valuable for attackers. Also, the security gap between the risk posture of IT and OT networks makes them a weak spot for organizations.
So, while we’ve quickly pivoted to put in new solutions and processes to address a new, distributed model, what do we do next? How do we take what we’ve learned this year, capitalize on the change in mindset that it is possible to move fast, and apply it to seize the OT security opportunity in 2021? Here are three areas of focus to help you build on your progress.
1. Budget.
2. Acceleration and resilience.
3. Simplify processes.
We’ve all been through a lot this past year, but we’ve risen to the occasion. Looking ahead to 2021 and a continuation of current constraints can seem daunting. But when you focus on these three areas, the synergistic benefits will propel you even further. Simplifying processes helps to enable acceleration and resilience and optimizes your resources – talent, time, and budget. We’re looking at a breakaway year for businesses, where you can seize the OT security opportunity and accelerate digital transformation into the future.
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