SECURING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
or all the positives they bring to businesses, digital transformation also brings a certain amount of risk. Collectively referred to as digital risks, these are unexpected consequences that result from businesses embracing digital transformation. Digital risks are many, but most of them come under cybersecurity risk, compliance, resilience, and dataprivacy.
Digital risks shouldn’t be taken lightly by any business. As of October 2020, Trend Micro has recorded 50 million cyberattacks in the GCC, a majority among them being email threats and email phishing. Closer to home, a Kaspersky report indicates that there has been a 190 per cent increase of cyberattacks in the UAE, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. These attacks erode customer confidence, and has reputational, legal, regulatory and financial consequences for the business.
Digital transformation is inevitable, but securing your business’s digital transformation is equally important. Giving due consideration to both aspects together allows you to gain best benefit out of your business going digital.
So, what can businesses do to fuel their digital ambition, while also keeping security aspects in mind?
Sunil Paul, Co-Founder, and Managing Director at Finesse, says, “There are ways organisations can avoid becoming victims of such cyberattacks. But like all things good, the journey is not glamorous, and it requires the support of everyone in the organisation.
“First and foremost, make cybersecurity part of your digital transformation roadmap right from the start. This means engaging security experts at the very start of the digital transformation journey and aligning security strategies to business goals.
“Second, is to boost cyberresilience. While systems should be resilient to cyberattacks, they should also be able to recover and fall back to earlier status quickly.
“Third, partner with security experts/implementation partners that take cybersecurity seriously, trust them to make the best decisions, empower them to take action and thus protect your company and its customers from future pain.
“Final, and most important – remove silos around cybersecurity within the organisation. Cybersecurity should be embedded into each product and service the company provides, and within each team in the organisation. Cybersecurity is everyone’s job, not just that of the security team personnel.”
Finesse, the digital transformation pioneer in the region, brings a holistic approach to your digital transformation journey. Finesse helps you plan and fuel your digital ambition, while also securing your business and help you move forward with confidence on your digital journey.
Finesse has a dedicated cybersecurity practice, which caters to cover infrastructure, cloud, application and data security, centrally managed from our state-ofthe-art SOC (Security Operations Centre), based locally here in the UAE.