Just as important as the innovation, is the protection

The impact of technology on organizations continues to grow and some will definitely argue that it has crossed a major tipping point the past few years and this month in particular has shown how technology is reshaping every sector of the economy.

1. Fast Food: Burger and pizza making robots are here. People often ask – how much do they cost – knowing they likely cost more than a minimum wage annual salary. But we know these machines will likely last many years and get better. Meaning, they will replace people over time… Restaurants not exploring this tech now will be at a disadvantage in the market.
2. Virtual restaurants are now possible because of delivery apps which allow customers to get the food without having to actually go to the virtual restaurant which is really just a kitchen somewhere nearby.
3. Automotive: How amazing is Elon Musk? Tesla is very new as far as car companies go but turned a profit in a highly competitive field with limited scale. All while producing cars in the U.S. – in an expensive labor market. Auto execs didn’t think the electric wave was important. Even BMW who had a huge lead in the space had to kick out its CEO because he didn’t focus on electric. Now, many car companies have decided, gas-powered motors will no longer be developed. Despite some of the largest R&D budgets on the planet, they are all now, behind Tesla.
4. Housing: Once again, Elon Musk is releasing third-gen solar roof tiles. There have been some fires attributed to Musk’s past solar roofing efforts but every iteration will continue to improve. Imagine the roofing tile vendors who never thought the rules of disruption applied to them.
5. Future of Work: In every business, people are working differently. They are more mobile and collaborative. Their tools need to reflect this new reality. And they use AI to save cost. Chatbots are a great example – they can handle basic tasks like giving out hours of operations and live agents can step in when there is a complex question.
6. Customer targeting: There has never been a better time to target customers… The tools we have today are incredible. We can track where customers go on our websites, build profiles and target people with similar interests. We can mine social media to see what our prospects like and leverage this information to serve them with solutions they need.
7. Cloud is making life easier for companies – they don’t need to have as much physical infrastructure. It makes sharing easier and allows companies to pay as they go.
8. Vertical farming is being explored in cities as tech allows us to monitor the growth of plants in real-time and adjust nutrients, water, light, etc. as needed to ensure optimal yield. Who would have thought farmland was disruptable?
9. Direct to customer selling made possible by the internet has allowed Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s to take on Gillette and become billion-dollar companies as a result. Perhaps most amazing – Casper who started the direct to customer mattress trend has become so successful, they now have stores in malls.
10. Channels to market are at an all time high. This is really an amazing lubricant for the global economy. App stores allow companies to have instant distribution for their applications. Tech companies providing services like YouTube allow for the widespread distribution of content which otherwise might not be seen by customers. In tech, managed service providers or MSPs allow a company selling to businesses to instantly hire a global salesforce without the need to really hire anyone.
11. SD-WAN is an essential networking technology – allowing companies to have continuous, high-quality internet for voice, video, collaboration and digital transformation.
12. IoT allows companies to run their businesses far more efficiently. For example – even a small pizzeria or restaurant can use it to monitor refrigerator temperatures and have the information sent to them immediately via solutions like Unified Office.
13. Edge-computing allows companies to monitor assembly-line or factory output in real-time for quality. Because the computing power is located nearby, it can rapidly assess quality and perform other AI analysis such as facial recognition, etc.
14. Virtual workforces which can be attained from companies like Fiverr or Upwork allow access to talent on-demand. Organizations can fill immediate needs rapidly and scale up and down as needed.
15. Holographic technology is on the way which will low much more realistic collaboration via holograms which look similar to what we might have seen in Star Wars movies.
16. AIOps will make managing IT operations far more efficient as AI will be able to spot problems and rework networks and computers in order to make sure they are more resilient and efficient… While allowing humans to work on higher-level tasks.
17. Blockchain allows for immutable, distributed databases. While this could be done without blockchain, the term has legitimized the need for distributed immutable databases. In other words, the hype over whether blockchain was needed to create such a database is not as important as what new applications are being developed on blockchain. For example, shipping is the low-hanging fruit for blockchain – allowing billions of dollars of savings from not having to deal with wasteful paper transactions.

Tech is everywhere and is becoming the fabric of organizations and business. Our challenge is, we need to understand how easily a single click on a link could bring all of this crashing down. Companies are being extorted and bankrupted because of cybersecurity holes.

The U.S. military is stronger than it has ever been – yet the country has enemies and their only attack vectors are at U.S. companies and citizens. Businesses are on the front line of attack from national adversaries. But even these nations are limited as to how much damage they can do at once. Typically, all hackers – unless they have a specific target in mind, scan for weakness and then attack the weakest companies first. Corporate systems are virtually all connected to the internet, meaning hackers in North Korea and Iran have no problem scanning them.

As companies continue to embrace automation, they must realize their systems are more essential by the day and steps need to be taken to secure them.

How do you stay secure or at least drastically reduce the risk? Just follow these three steps. Good luck!

1) Read cybersecurity essentials – a simple list which will help most organizations become far more secure.

2) Go to a phishing simulation vendor now and sign up for one of their offerings. Phishing Box, KnowBe4 and Phish360; are all great. This is needed to train workers by testing them without their knowledge by sending real-looking emails to their inboxes. If they click, they are immediately trained on what not to do.

3) We also recommend you get a free evaluation of your cybersecurity risk from an MSP/MSSP immediately – they can also help you build in the needed compliance to reduce the risk of being fined.