In response to the current COVID pandemic, remote working has become the 'new norm' for the majority of businesses across the UK, forcing organisations to suddenly accelerate their digital transformation efforts. As much as these developments can greatly benefit businesses in many areas - both internally, and in terms of customer experience - they can also introduce a variety of new security challenges that could leave unprepared businesses vulnerable to cyber attacks.

 

What Does Digital Transformation Mean for Businesses?

Digital transformation refers to the process of integrating new digital technologies into various areas of a business, significantly altering how the business operates by creating new - or modifying existing - business processes, customer experiences, and overall organisational culture.

Digital transformation is not only about leveraging new technologies to improve traditional methods, but also about implementing entirely new strategies to keep pace with the changing demands of the new digital age. 

 

Accelerated Transformations in Response to COVID

With the country put into a state of lockdown earlier this year, businesses unable to operate in their normal office environment had to quickly implement new practices and online services to maintain communication, collaboration and access to company resources regardless of physical restrictions.

Most notably the adoption of cloud applications like Microsoft's 365 suite as well as collaboration and conference services like Zoom and Teams has skyrocketed, with Microsoft Teams usage increasing 894% since February, and Zoom usage increasing by 677% in the same period.

Despite the very unfortunate circumstances that have lead business leaders to these changes to daily operations, many have found great success in employee productivity - so much so, a large number of businesses are actually planning to continue a certain level of remote working even after social distancing measures are eventually dropped.

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However, with new business technologies and online practices of course come new security challenges, and as we've already discussed in previous articles it appears that many UK professionals are still displaying poor security habits in regards to device usage, software maintenance and data protection.

To offer more insight into how digital transformations could impact your business, we've highlighted below the key security risks introduced with just a handful of the most popular current trends.

 

  • BYOD
    When users are trusted with the responsibility to use their own personal devices for work related tasks - whether this is within the workplace, or whilst working from home - it can be extremely difficult to maintain the same standard of security across the whole company network simply due to a lack of control. 

    Firstly, these devices may not have the appropriate anti-virus softwares installed for a baseline level of protection, leaving them extremely vulnerable to infiltrations. However, a lack of anti-virus is becoming less of an issue in modern times as many devices come with default versions pre-installed - the bigger issue with BYOD is user behaviour, as this is much trickier to monitor and manage. For example, if users are sharing devices amongst their household, signing into unsecured public networks, or downloading sketchy apps, they could not only be putting their personal device and data at risk, but also their company's.

  • Collaboration & Conferencing Apps
    Video conferencing tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams can make online communications - from large group meetings to quick 1-to-1 chats - an easy task, and can even offer features that make your calls more efficient than the in-person equivalent, like the ability to easily record meetings for those unable to attend.

    However, as it is true with any online communications, poor security practices can quickly lead to cybercriminals covertly listening in on confidential business discussions. In fact, so many people have experienced unauthorised users intruding on their Zoom conferences during this lockdown period, the term 'Zoombombing' has now been coined, emphasising how common this threat to business data really is.

  • IoT Devices
    IoT devices have already had a huge impact throughout the last decade on the digital developments of both our homes and office spaces, yet the significant security challenges they introduce seem to be continually overlooked. If not properly secured, IoT devices can essentially be leveraged as a gateway into your wider network, quickly leading to compromised data and user accounts. Whether your IoT devices are vulnerable to these kind of attacks comes down to not only your businesses monitoring of traffic activity, but also the device developers themselves, as these malicious infiltrations are often blamed on poor coding or weak default password protection.

 

The Digital Transformation Security Checklist

For more information on how you can combat the security risks associated with these popular transformation strategies, as well as additional technology trends to consider implementing to strengthen your organisation's defences against the advanced attacks of modern cyber criminals, download your copy of the Digital Transformation Security Checklist.

Digital Transformation Security Checklist - Altinet Get Your Copy of the Checklist