This Week in Consulting
Wednesday, June 10th 2020
How are remote working and digitization impacting the way companies prepare for cyber risks?
THIS WEEK’S MUST READ
“Due to the coronavirus pandemic, more employees are working from home than ever before. Companies have been forced to react to maintain productivity, often on reduced timelines and without the careful consideration, rigorous testing and advance training that might otherwise occur.“
Despite implementing a work-at-home policy to help avoid the spread of this pandemic, the fact remains that the cyber threats are real. What are companies confronted with? What strategies can they put in place?
This Week’s Must Read is an insight piece from Allen Matkins about Cybersecurity Risks in remote work environments.
Read on to Find out More: “Mitigating Cybersecurity Risks In Remote Work Environments“ | Matthew J. Marino, Max Brunner and Kathryn Garcin, Allen Matkins.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
- COVID-19 executive cyber briefing: “As the attack surface exponentially grows in the era of COVID-19, threat actors are increasingly targeting an organization’s weakest links—from its operational systems to its backup servers—often in highly sophisticated ways. This has opened the door to enterprise-wide destructive cyberattacks. To mitigate these risks, organizations must adopt new educational tools, technical solutions, and business strategies.” A weekly brief that lists the most current cyber threats, trends, and recommendations on managing growing cyber risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. | Emily Mossburg and Amir Belkhelladi, Deloitte
- Don’t Let Remote Employees Expose Your Business: “There are three basic methods for remotely connecting to a company infrastructure from home. The least secure is allowing employees to use their own devices to work from home. A more secure method utilizes Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), while a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is generally considered the most secure method of connecting remotely. Each method carries unique and shared risks.” An interesting analysis on risk management for businesses, more vulnerable than ever to ransom software, phishing, and other cyber-attacks since the beginning of the pandemic. | Monique Ferraro, HSB.
- Cyber Preparedness in the Midst of COVID-19: “COVID-19 cyber-attacks exploit the unique behaviors and trends that mark this pandemic: a remote workforce, financially-stressed industries, and highly-strained employees. As businesses shift to teleworking, global collaboration platforms like Microsoft’s Teams or Zoom have become targets. Even the virtual private networks (VPNs) most organizations deploy to add another layer of security have fallen prey to bad actors.” An in-depth approach to why all organizations should think now about their e-preparedness. | Meredith Griffanti and David Dunn, FTI Consulting.
- Machines Protecting Themselves Is the Future of Cybersecurity: “Any nations’ digital infrastructure and the businesses it supports are its most vital technology resources, as the COVID-19 pandemic makes clear. Cybercriminal and advanced persistent threat (APT) groups are attempting to capitalize on the disruption that COVID-19 is creating to engage in malicious cyber activity.” As human responses and existing approaches to securing IT to cyber threats are not always relevant, the need for machines to protect themselves becomes crucial. | Louis Columbus.
CONSULTING INDUSTRY NEWS
- Cint : chosen by GfK to accelerate data collection and transform operational efficiency– “Leading market research company GfK has selected Cint’s automated technology platform as part of an ongoing programme to transform its digital marketing effectiveness and consumer insights business. With a track record for powering market research technology stacks for some of the world’s most successful insights companies, Cint is well-positioned to automate GfK’s sampling operations.” | MarketScreener.
- Onfido, Deloitte, Evernym successfully trial reusable digital identity solutions: “The trial has confirmed that their reusable digital identity solution has been proven with market participants. Testing began in February 2019, shortly after these companies were accepted into the UK’s FCA Regulatory Sandbox (Cohort 5) to evaluate how reusable or ‘portable’ identity can improve customer onboarding journeys and reduce compliance costs for financial institutions.” | The Paypers.
- Can private-equity firms turn a crisis into an opportunity? “MOST APPARENTLY sound stewards of capital were revealed to be anything but during the 2007-09 financial crisis. Bank bosses were shown to have taken on too much risk. Star hedge-fund managers suffered losses. Nor have the years since then been kind. Banks have been tied up in regulatory knots and returns at hedge funds have been pedestrian at best.” |The Economist
- ICT players remain relatively resilient to Covid-19: “The impact of Covid-19 has taken a heavy toll on economic activity in almost every sector in 2020. Even technology, which had been booming in the last few years thanks to the growing need for digitalisation, has taken a hit – to the extent that even 5G technology, which was expected to greatly improve the interconnectivity of modern business, has been significantly delayed by the lock-down.” | Consultancy.uk
Hélène Laffitte is the CEO of Consulting Quest, a Global Performance-Driven Consulting Platform and author of “Smart Consulting Sourcing”, a step by step guide to getting the best ROI from your consulting. With a blend of experience in Procurement and Consulting, Hélène is passionate about helping Companies create more value through Consulting.
