Corporate governance guided by data protection

After a busy 2021 and a first quarter rich in initial lessons; it is time to act on the priorities of companies for 2022, the issues they must face and the opportunities available to each leader to sustain their activity, at least by protecting it from data breaches. This does not only concern the choice of security solutions but also that of the governance to be adopted to protect the intelligence and the history of the company. To do this, it is essential to consider the implementation of a suitable business recovery plan.

Dealing with new ways of working and their sustainability

It would be foolish not to cite a parameter that has greatly changed the situation in terms of data governance: remote operation and hybrid mode. The massive acceleration in the deployment of partial or full remote working observed over the past two years has dramatically changed the threat landscape, with an ever-increasing increase in cyberattacks and victims. And that should not change anytime soon: the return to a way of working similar to 2019 is not in sight. For this reason, in 2022, it is easy to predict that cybercrime, and the threat of ransomware in particular, will still be a major challenge for businesses. Protecting their ever-changing IT environments must be the priority.

With the growing number of teleworkers and deployed applications, it is easier for cybercriminals to find new targets and penetrate organizations’ computer networks. If this is not already the case, companies must have a precise vision of the optimal protection strategy for their data and compare it with what is actually in place in order to improve it without delay. However, one of the biggest challenges at the moment is that budgets are not as important as they used to be. So in 2022, business leaders and IT managers will have to prioritize investments.

Overcoming the Obstacle of Diminished Funding

Historically, cybersecurity projects have not always been given as much priority as they should have been, and 2022 must be the year to take action, because everyone is now aware of the cyber risks that threaten them. However, it is essential to think about budgets in light of the many challenges that companies face: digital transformation, cybersecurity, integration of new analysis technologies, multiplication of applications, etc. For this, it is time to think about prioritizing.

Businesses will be looking to make smarter technology investments in 2022 as budgets are tighter with many ongoing and upcoming projects. Forging new relationships with customers is extremely important for every business to continue generating revenue, but doing so successfully while their customer revenues are impacted by the pandemic is a new metric to consider. The large multi-year contracts and the “big deals” known before the pandemic are not necessarily legion because everyone, at their level, is more attentive than ever to expenses and especially to the items concerned.

A new technological and economic horizon

One of the solutions that can be glimpsed is to reduce the total number of suppliers that the company works with in order to reduce costs. Also, it is becoming essential to seek solutions and partners, in particular technological ones, that are more complete and inclusive. The change in the investment model is also important: pay-per-use is really becoming more democratic today and this is an opportunity to be seized for all players, publishers, customers, partners, etc. This model has already proven itself to the general public, like unlimited video streaming platforms. And it’s time for the business world to get on board, as IDC experts predict that 53% of software revenue will come from a subscription model in 2022. In line with this shift in business model is the increasing migration of workflows and workloads to the cloud, both public and private. If the first has experienced tremendous growth in 2020 due to its ease of commissioning in the face of an emergency, the second is convincing more and more companies for its promise of security, the main challenge for companies today. Also, if the acceleration often goes through the public cloud, it seems written, in the longer term, that companies will work on scalable models, often hybrid, more economical than on-premise or multi-cloud.

The year 2022 will certainly hold many surprises, but the experts already agree on the rise, once again, of cyber threats and computer attacks, and on the sustainability of these new ways of working, which imposes a real long-term strategy. Reactivity is enough at all costs, it is high time to think about protecting yourself before the crisis occurs!