2017 is winding down. 2018 is right around the corner. And that’s got us both looking forward and looking back.
Cyber threats: Looking back, IT in 2017 was marked by an absolute explosion of ransomware attacks. One antivirus vendor published a “top 10 of 2017” list of the worst ransomware attacks. Ten. In a year. Bad enough to rank. And that’s just the ransomware, not all cyber threats.
Sadly, there’s nothing to suggest that 2018 will be any better. Long gone are the days when a good antivirus program was the only protection you needed. This year, next year, probably forever, cyber security will become ever more critical and ever more complex.
Insurance: We saw another article recently that posed the question “does having cyber threat insurance increase your risk of attack?” In 2017, the answer seemed to be “yes”. Most ransomware attacks are economic; it’s extortion. Pay to get your data back. Companies with cyber insurance are more likely to pay… albeit by filing a claim against their policy.
There’s evidence that cyber criminals have tried to steal insurance company customer lists in order to target those companies with cyber coverage. That will no doubt increase in 2018, too, making preventative protection all that more important.
Email: In 2017, probably for the first time since we started installing email servers 20+ years ago(!) now, we did not install a new or replacement email server in a client’s office. We moved many mail systems to the cloud via Microsoft Office 365. We’ll move many more in 2018. But we may not install another email server platform at a client site again, ever… and that’s not a bad thing.
Your website: A couple years ago, we wrote about why “Google hates your Website”. That had mostly to do with the fact that most business Websites were not mobile-friendly – and with the majority of search happening on mobile devices, Google started to punish non-mobile-friendly sites.
However, if you got that new and improved, mobile-friendly Website a year or two ago, and haven’t really touched it since, bad news. Google probably hates it again. Google has always been about search relevance so that the customer gets a useful result. Increasingly, that relevance comes from current, authoritative content. For your Website to be a key part of your marketing machine in 2018, it’s going to need some regular love and attention -- “set it and forget it” simply won’t work.
There’s plenty more we could cover here, no shortage of interesting IT stuff in 2017. But a quick glance at the word count suggests this would be a good place to stop, other than to mention that we can help you with any / all of the above, and more, in 2018. And beyond.
