2020 is winding down – and not a moment too soon for most of us. 2021 and hopes for a better new year are right around the corner. And that’s got us both looking forward and looking back.
Cyber threats: Looking back, IT in 2020 was marked by an absolute explosion of ransomware attacks. Sadly, there’s nothing to suggest that 2021 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.
Passwords: 2020 was the year of the phish. For the second half of this year, we had nearly one password “theft” a week. Some of those were “volunteered” when a user visited a scammy site and entered their credentials thinking they were on a legit site. Some of those were stolen from other services and then, with people still reusing their passwords on more than one site, those common passwords were used to access other services. For 2021, it’s clear, if it wasn’t before, that passwords alone aren’t getting the security job done. 2021 will be the year of multi-factor authentication.
If there’s a theme here, it’s that 2021 will be the year of security. It has to be, to respond to and stay ahead of, what the bad guys are doing.
There’s plenty more we could cover here, no shortage of interesting IT stuff in 2020. 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 2021. And beyond.
