3 minute read
Out of the shadows: how cybersecurity has taken centre stage in the Australian business arena
MICHELLE LIAO
by Michelle Liao, A/NZ Channel and Distribution Manager at WatchGuard Technologies
The pandemic has invigorated the cybersecurity sector and made it a more appealing place to work.
What a difference a couple of years can make. When a globally momentous event takes place—think World Wars I and II and the September 11 attacks—it inevitably becomes an indelible time marker, splitting history into two parts: before and after.
So it has been with Covid-19. The biggest health crisis since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 has triggered significant economic and societal changes, including a rethink about the reliance on global supply chains by businesses and governments, and the normalisation of hybrid and remote working.
CYBER SHAKE-UP
The pandemic has shaken things up in the cybersecurity sector, albeit in ways that, to folks who do not work in the space every day, may not seem quite so dramatic as its wider impacts.
I am fortunate to have worked in cybersecurity since 2016 and I have observed big changes since 2020. Prior to Covid, cybersecurity was very much a niche subsector of the broader ICT industry.
Yes, businesses and organisations knew they needed to take steps to protect their systems and data from compromise and attack, but senior decisionmakers typically did not get overly exercised about the
specifics of the risk mitigation measures they had in place.
For most, the cyber solutions and services they relied on were very much grudge purchases: up there with insurance on the list of things they needed to have but did not want to spend more than the minimum on.
RISING RISK
And then along came the virus and with it a host of other viruses, phishing campaigns and cyberscams. Hackers and cyber criminals are nothing if not opportunistic, and many of them sought to cash in on the fear, uncertainty and doubt individuals and organisations were experiencing.
During the 2020-21 financial year the Australian Cyber Security Centre received more than 67,500 cyber crime reports, an increase of 13 percent on the previous year.
Widely reported ransomware attacks—including the two that crippled beer and dairy products producer Lion’s operations in June 2020—put the wind up businesses of all stripes and sizes. Hence, we saw business leaders begin to take a much keener interest in the tools, technologies and processes their own organisations were deploying to avert and mitigate similar offensives.
READINESS TO INVEST
Upon becoming aware of gaps, they were prepared, finally, to spend serious sums on plugging them. So much so that Gartner is predicting end user spending on cybersecurity will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 10.4 percent until 2026.
Pleasingly, we have seen small and medium sized businesses account for their fair share of that spend. An increasing number are augmenting their traditional firewalls with tools and technologies such as multifactor authentication and endpoint security that were not previously in their budgets. That is good news, because the events of the past two years have shown us that hackers and cyber criminals do not confine their attentions to the top end of town. Smaller players are just as likely to be targeted, and their capacity to recover from a major incident is often less than that of their larger counterparts. End user education has also become far more common as organisations realise well-trained employees can be a formidable first line of defence.
WORKING TOGETHER
All that activity and investment has been good news for cybersecurity vendors and their partners in the channel, but the benefits extend beyond the, always welcome, bottom-line boost.
Acceptance into the broader business conversation has engendered a palpable sense of positivity among the folk who work in cybersecurity: salespeople, engineers and analysts alike. After years of them being relegated to the backroom the contribution they make and the importance of their work is being acknowledged and appreciated. At last, everyone gets it.
And the sector’s increasingly high profile is also alerting more Australians to the opportunities it can offer. This is important if we are to solve the country’s long-running cyber skills shortage, which is a crisis in itself and one further exacerbated by pandemic-driven demand.
For anyone looking for a challenging and fulfilling career, I am delighted to say there has never been a more rewarding time to get into the cybersecurity space.
