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Technological advances pushing mobile video surveillance growth

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The Global Mobile Video Surveillance Market was worth $2.35bn in 2022 and expected to reach $4.25bn by 2028, equivalent to a CAGR of 8.79% over the forecast period.

With rising crime rates in both digital and physical worlds, the importance of location and asset surveillance has increased. Mobile video surveillance, which facilitate real-time monitoring and remote access to video feeds from any corner of the globe, has emerged as an important tool for individuals, businesses, and law enforcement departments.

From property surveillance to employee safety assurance to responding quickly to security threats, mobile video surveillance offers a versatile and potent solution for the end users.

The Global Mobile Video Surveillance Market research report by Brandessence Market Research provides a comprehensive analysis of the current market trends, drivers, challenges, and opportunities in the industry. The report offers detailed insights into the market size, growth potential, and competitive landscape of the global mobile video surveillance market.

Key Findings

  • Mobile Video Surveillance Market is expected to amplify with a CAGR of 8.79% over 2022-2029.
  • Growing crime rates and influx of advanced technologies in the field of security surveillance are aiding industry expansion.
  • By product, the VMS segment is likely to amass notable gains due to its ability to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of video surveillance systems.
  • MEA is projected to capture a substantial volume share over 2022-2029 owing to rising crime rates, increased terrorist activity, and the need to secure large-scale events.

The report’s author define Mobile Video Surveillance as the use of portable video cameras and other related equipment to monitor and record activities in a particular location or area. It requires the deployment of cameras and other surveillance equipment that can be easily moved from one location to another, allowing for flexible and adaptable surveillance solutions. It offers real-time monitoring and recording of activities, enabling quick response to potential security threats or incidents.

CIOs – Heading for a new direction

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Three years ago, CIOs were winning plaudits from the rest of the c-suite for the way the IT team scrambled to deliver a digital workplace within a matter of days. Now, however, the shine has faded badly. While traditional IT performance measures may point to great system uptime, utilisation and performance, the human digital experience is far from ideal.

Indeed, the lack of subjective understanding of the individual employee digital experience is  creating serious business problems, from plummeting productivity to staff retention and reputational damage. And yet many CIOs have no idea. 

The model has to change. CIOs need to move beyond IT operational measures and gain true insight into the day-to-day human digital experience of every employee. As Dave Page, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Actual Experience, explains, when up to 90% of employee time is now digital, CIOs must truly understand and improve every employee’s digital experience – or face the inevitable consequences…

Inadequate Experience

CIOs have been living on past success for too long. It was a fantastic effort to extend digital workplace strategies at an unprecedented pace but time has moved on and CIOs have been slow to recognise the problems. Employees’ expectation of hybrid working is ubiquitous but each employee’s experience of the digital workplace is unique. They may all use the same core operational platforms, but different Wi-Fi, broadband connections, VPN set-ups, even training, will lead to an individual day to day experience. According to a recent Savanta ComRes survey, 89% of employees suffer from poor audio and video quality while working digitally, 53% say this reduces their productivity and 46% find this stressful. In turn, that is creating very significant business problems associated with digital inequality, employee disconnect and lost productivity.

This is nothing new. The quality of the digital experience has not been reduced by widespread deployment. Or the speed of expansion. The truth is that companies have never delivered a digital environment that provided a good subjective human workplace experience.. It didn’t matter as much when only 20% to 30% of employees’ time was digital – although it was hardly a great experience for those employees. Now, digital represents 60% to 90% of their time and the flaws in the quality, reliability and relevance of that digital employee experience are very evident and very costly.

What is even worse is that the majority of CIOs can’t detect that there is a problem. HR employee survey data is out of date and irrelevant by the time it has been collated and analysed. The support trouble-ticketing system may give a hint of a problem – but the IT team has no idea if the employee complaining about Microsoft Teams is just reporting a minor glitch with the video or actively seeking alternative employment.

Wrong Data

Why is the employee digital experience so inconsistent when CIOs are awash with IT performance information? Many large businesses routinely collect terabytes of data to capture immediate insight into the way the infrastructure is operating. They know to a millisecond how web pages are responding, where network glitches are occurring and memory resources becoming strained. The problem is that this information provides zero insight into each employee’s subjective human experience, the day-to-day realities that influence well-being, retention and productivity. And when a poor digital experience can have a significant financial cost due to poor productivity, staff loss and low morale, this is a problem that directly affects a business’ profitability.

Yes, they still need to know whether there is a millisecond delay on a web site, that CPU utilisation is critical or there are security problems, but the urgent insight the CIO needs today is if and how such problems affect an employee’s productivity or engagement. And its quantifiable business impact. The IT department has more engineering data than it can ever use but without any way to understand what that means for individual employee experience, the data has no business value.

Despite the huge investment in data collection tools, CIOs are flying blind – and that is creating massive business risk. How can CIOs ensure investment is supporting the employee digital experience when they have no insight into or understanding of the current quality of that experience? How can engineers prioritise and deliver remedial activity that makes a real difference? How can the business achieve the bottom-line value associated with better productivity, improved morale and great employee retention that is underpinned by a great digital experience?

Human Experience Insight

CIOs need to change focus, fast. Uptime and system availability and response time are valid measures of system performance but in the world of hybrid working, an inability to prioritise and measure the unique human digital experience will be a fast track to failure.  They need a way to identify and understand the unique digital employee experience – in detail and continuously – from an engagement and productivity perspective.

This insight can reveal digital inequality and highlight those staff clearly struggling with productivity and/ or engagement. Combining this knowledge with other business metrics, including payroll and recruitment costs, can support a far more insight driven business case for investment, by employee, team, department or the entire business. It can provide the foundation for continual improvement and collaboration with HR to create an employee value proposition that drives additional business value.

Conclusion

Organisations can no longer feel satisfied that every digital employee has access to systems from any location. That is not good enough. The quality and reality of day-to-day employee human experience now sits at the heart of C-Suite metrics; it underpins employee retention and productivity, board level Environmental and Social Governance, as well as Corporate Social Responsibility.

To support the Future of Work, the quality of that digital human experience is increasingly affecting business performance, profitability, and competitive advantage, and CIOs have an absolutely critical role to play. It is time to accept that the current data resources are inadequate. Stop flying blind and actively seek out the insight that will provide a true picture of the digital employee experience.

Who foots the bill in the event of a data breach?

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Data breach is almost inevitable – which means it is vital that companies and their Managed Services Providers (MSPs) understand exactly who is responsible and who bears the financial brunt. But recent research reveals that both companies and MSPs are disturbingly unclear about their legal and financial obligations.

Contracts are ambiguous and the risks of legal wrangling severe. The truth is that when a breach occurs and data is exposed, neither party wins.

As Simon Pamplin, CTO, Certes Networks, insists, rather than playing the blame game, the priority must be to protect the data to ensure that even when an attacker breaks through, there is nothing to see and nothing to gain…

Financial Burden

Cyber security has become a board level issue in recent years – not least since the introduction of ever more punitive fines and personal responsibility for the protection of sensitive data. Yet recent research undertaken by Sapio Research on behalf of Certes Networks confirms that far too many businesses are simply handing over responsibility to an IT Service Provider (ITSP) or Managed Services Provider (MSP) – and expecting the provider to pick up the financial cost should a data breach occur.

Companies employing third party organisations to deliver security policies expect ITSPs to cover 48% of the costs in the event of a data breach. Astonishingly, 73% of ITSPs also consider themselves responsible for paying fines and damages and believe they should pay 51% of the costs.

Whether these expectations can be met as and when a breach occurs remains a legal minefield. More critically, for senior managers personally liable for security and information protection compliance, does this abdication of responsibility to a third party stand up to regulatory scrutiny?

Endemic Misperception

How does a reliance on an MSP or ITSP support the zero-trust approach to separating policy responsibility from system administration? Any security posture needs to be defined from a business standpoint to reflect the sensitivity of specific data sets. But if the onus is placed on the MSP, the entire security posture is both defined and delivered by a network security team. Contractual agreements will be meaningless if a regulator comes down hard on this clear lack of Separation of Duties.

Furthermore, the legal standpoint is that the data owner is responsible and liable for any data breach – so any company with the misperception that the MSP or ITSP will foot the bill is likely to be in for a very nasty surprise. This perception indicates that far too many companies are not considering the true implications of data security at the right level.

Are the data protection and compliance officers, as well as senior managers, now personally liable for protecting sensitive company, customer and partner data involved in these decisions? If so, do they really believe that asking the network security team to appoint an MSP to provide an SD WAN is really an adequate approach to data protection and compliance?

Demanding Safeguards

It is naïve to expect a network security infrastructure expert to understand the full implication of financial and reputation loss associated with a data breach. It is not in their remit. They are responsible for the performance of the infrastructure – not the value or assurance of corporate data.

Companies need to take ownership of their data – and that means demanding the MSP or ITSP provides another level of data protection. An MSP that wraps security around the data, rather than relying on the network infrastructure, can provide business leaders with the essential assurance that data is protected and compliant.

Adopting Layer 4, policy-based encryption ensures the data payload is protected for its entire journey – and because only the payload data is encrypted while header data remains in the clear, means minimal disruption to network services or applications. With encryption policies based on the sensitivity of corporate data, the business can achieve a clear separation between policy setting and systems management.  A win for both data officers and network security teams.

Conclusion

This research raises a very concerning issue for both companies and ITSPs/ MSPs. Whoever ends up footing the bill – and the chances are that a lengthy court case could ensue – no one wins. Any data breach will incur not only immediate financial costs but long-term business consequences that could be devastating for both parties.

So why risk it? If a company takes a different approach and demands that additional data protection layer, there is no longer any issue of blame or cost. The company is no longer relying on a third party to safeguard its data, but instead taking ownership itself. By encrypting data, in a way that doesn’t affect business operations, it is safeguarded across whatever infrastructure the MSP or ITSP is providing.

IT Governance: 31.5m records breached in December 2022

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In its latest analysis of data breaches and cyber attacks across the world, IT Governance has identified 78 publicly disclosed security incidents in December – resulting in 31,586,757 compromised records.

Compared to November 2022, we can see a slight decline, where we identified 95 publicly disclosed security incidents and 32,051,144 compromised records.

Alan Calder, Founder and Chairman of IT Governance, said” “Although November was a particularly bad month for security, December still shows an unnerving level of incidents. As organisations enter the holiday period, it’s important for them to remember that cyber attacks and data breaches don’t pause during this time, and can often have more of an impact – one factor being due to the absence of in-office employees.

“Cyber criminals are always seeking ways to take advantage, and the Christmas period is especially enticing to them as people are not always ‘on the ball’ during this period. The increase of online shopping and financial transactions around Christmas also gives plenty of opportunities for cyber crime, so it’s vital to stay vigilant and protect your personal information, as well as organisations taking the necessary precautions to stay one step ahead of criminals. Investment in strong cyber defence in depth is so important to ensure you can withstand a breach, not just during the holiday period, but throughout the year.”

You can find the full list of incidents with further details here, broken into their respective categories; Cyber Attacks, Ransomware, Data Breaches, Financial Information, Malicious Insiders and Miscellaneous Incidents.

Respecting data privacy rights through data encryption

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John Michael, CEO at iStorage considers the need for increased privacy in relation to sensitive information and looks at the methods and mechanisms to ensure high levels of data security…

Data privacy should be a top priority for all organisations. As systems and services increasingly move into the cloud as part of the digital transformation agenda, company data, a much sought-after commodity to malicious threat actors, is ripe for the taking. And, there has never been a more critical time to protect it. Evolving intelligence indicates that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyber-attacks [1] as a response to unprecedented sanctions and export controls to hold President Putin to account for his war against Ukraine. This puts organisations at risk and means that cybersecurity and data protection must be an absolute priority.

Even relatively small measures taken to secure data can have an immediate positive effect when rolled out across a business and its stakeholders, but companies are not always quick enough to respond and act. What, then, are the steps that organisations should be taking, and how can they be implemented quickly and effectively to respect the rights of the data owner while implementing the highest levels of protection to prevent data from becoming compromised?

Encrypting data in the cloud

Encrypting data is a requirement of most compliance standards. Organisations are under constant attack and, regardless of whether the attack makes headlines or not, the data should be protected. To ensure data privacy when faced with common threats, such as DDoS and malware attacks, data must be encrypted before it is sent to the cloud, in transit and at rest. For ultra-secure encryption, that data should preferably be encrypted with a FIPS certified randomly generated AES 256-bit encrypted encryption key. Confidential information stored on a local computer or drive, sent via email or file-sharing service, and shared in the cloud should be securely encrypted.

The more people the data is shared with, the greater the challenge to ensure data privacy. Storing data in one place and ensuring that it can only be accessed by authorised users who have a copy of the encrypted encryption key can allow for efficient working whilst ensuring data security. Sharing encrypted data allows for instant collaboration in the cloud, safe in the knowledge that the data is highly secure.

Controlling the encryption key

If the data is stored in the cloud, control of the encryption key is important. Granted, most cloud service providers (CSPs) will encrypt their customers’ data and some even offer a key management system service, allowing customers to manage their encryption keys. However, the encryption key is still stored in the cloud and thus accessible to hackers and even the CSP’s own staff. It’s imperative that the user has full and secure control of the encryption key in order to ensure the data is kept confidential even if the cloud account is hacked.

Having your own key management system will not only give you more control of encryption keys but is also more convenient for those using a multi-cloud solution. And security measures must go beyond simple cloud login credentials. If a hacker obtains a user’s credentials, the breach will go unnoticed to the CSP who will not be able to differentiate between the hacker and a legitimate user. Keeping the encryption key away from the cloud increases the number of security measures from just one authentication, the cloud account login, to as much as a five-factor authentication.

Back up encrypted data to secure drives

Backing up valuable data onto an encrypted hard drive can prevent organisations from losing access to their important information during, for example, a ransomware attack. Using a PIN-protected hard drive will secure the data even if the drive is lost or stolen, avoiding the risk of the data being accessed or viewed by unauthorised persons. To avoid losing sensitive information in the event of a ransomware attack, sharing information using PIN-protected USB flash drives is another safe option. This can be especially useful for remote workers as they can securely protect and back up their confidential data on the move.

Encrypting data within a dedicated hardware-based Common Criteria EAL5+ certified secure microprocessor is the ideal solution to data security. The ultra-secure microprocessor employs built-in physical protection mechanisms, designed to thwart cyber-attacks, and is designed to defend against external tampering, bypass laser attacks and fault injections. All critical components within the drive should be covered by a layer of tough epoxy resin which is virtually impossible to remove without causing permanent damage to the critical components. In addition, brute-force limitation ensures that if a PIN is continuously entered incorrectly the encrypted encryption key is deleted along with all data previously stored on the drive.

Following these recommendations will help today’s businesses keep their sensitive information confidential, regardless of where it is stored and how it is shared. Data encryption is an important part of ensuring ongoing data integrity, helping organisations comply with data protection regulations and earn customer trust in their abilities to manage safer data.

About John Michael, CEO, iStorage

After constantly reading about increasing data loss incidents, iStorage CEO and Founder, John Michael, saw this was clearly a growing problem with damaging consequences and identified a huge gap in the market to establish a business offering ultra-secure, easy-to-use and affordable data storage devices. Applying his 35 years’ worth of knowledge and experience within the data storage space enabled John to come up with ideas for products that would resolve such problems.

[1] https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-110a

60% of firms optimistic about cloud sovereignty innovation and collaboration

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Cloud sovereignty is increasingly becoming a priority for organizations looking for secure, innovative, and scalable solutions to manage their data, according to Capgemini Research Institute’s latest report, “The journey to cloud sovereignty: Assessing cloud potential to drive transformation and build trust”.

The report finds that cloud sovereignty adoption is primarily driven by regulation and organizations’ need to control their data, but they also expect it to build trust, foster collaboration, and accelerate the move to a data-sharing ecosystem.

According to the report, organizations have some concerns about using the public cloud as the core of digital transformation projects: 69% of organizations cite potential exposure to extra-territorial laws in a cloud environment, 68% a lack of transparency and control over what is done with their data in the cloud, and 67% mention operational dependency on vendors based outside their region’s jurisdiction.

A large majority of organizations globally believe they will adopt cloud sovereignty to ensure compliance with regulations (71%) or to bring in controls and transparency over their data (67%), whereas ensuring immunity from extra-territorial data access (65%) comes third.

Nearly half of organizations (43%) globally define cloud sovereignty as keeping their data within their preferred jurisdiction, whatever the origin of the cloud provider, whereas only 14% define it as the exclusive use of cloud providers based in the same legal jurisdiction.

When selecting a cloud provider, the four key factors organizations focus on primarily are identity, access management, and encryption (82%), isolation of their sensitive data in the cloud (81%) and cost competitiveness (69%) and having local/regional datacenters (66%).

Demand for cloud services is shifting in line with new expectations around sovereignty

When asked about their expected cloud environment for the next 1-3 years, more than one-third (38%) of organizations expect to have a public/hybrid cloud environment with local data centers. 30% expect to use a disconnected version or the local legal entity of a hyperscaler, whereas 11% plan to work exclusively with cloud providers based within the same legal jurisdiction.

Nearly half (48%) of public sector organizations are either already considering cloud sovereignty as a part of their cloud strategy or planning to include it in the next 12 months. They are slightly more driven by complying with regulations (76% versus 70% for private organizations) and ensuring immunity from extra-territorial data access (69% versus 64%). However, they are also expecting more data-related benefits from sovereign cloud than private organizations.

Fostering collaboration and data-sharing ecosystems

The report also indicates that, while meeting highest regulatory concerns and data security requirements, organizations are looking at cloud sovereignty to unlock the benefits of the cloud for them, including better collaboration, increased data sharing, greater trust, and opportunities for innovation. 60% of organizations believe that cloud sovereignty will facilitate sharing data with trusted ecosystem partners, and 42% of surveyed executives believe that a trusted interoperable cloud service can help them to scale new technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and the internet of things (IoT).

Marc Reinhardt, Head of Public Sector at Capgemini, said: “In our current environment, the sovereignty of one’s supply chain and IT has become truly strategic. For those organizations currently still reluctant to leverage the obvious benefits of the cloud, sovereignty is a way to get there. As a result, it is gaining importance across sectors and regions, to enable organizations to control and protect their data to an even greater extent – for the Public Sector, with emphasis on trust, transparency, choice, portability. And it is not a surprise that Government and Public Sector bodies are among the leaders in pursuing or considering a sovereign cloud in their organizations.”

“In designing their cloud strategies, organizations should not just focus on compliance requirements but also have a true ‘enterprise view’ of their data. In so doing, they will fully reap the benefits from sovereign cloud, including trust, collaboration, and innovation for even the most sensitive of data areas, and build a competitive advantage or better service for their constituents.”

Web threats ‘increased by over 130%’ at the end of 2021

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According to the data presented by Atlas VPN, web threats have increased by 133% in November and December of 2021, compared to September and October. In addition, JavaScript downloaders and crypto miners were the most active web threats at the end of 2021.
Web threats affect everyone and every device that is connected to the internet. Web threats enter users’ networks without their awareness and can be activated by opening a spam email or clicking on an executable file attachment.
Web threats reached 59,478 unique malicious URLs in September 2021, which resulted in 319,497 total threats. In October, the number kept slightly increasing to 60,440 unique malicious URLs, accumulating 361,184 hits.
November and December months combined accumulated 133% more web threats than September and October. The 84,470 unique malicious URLs in November turned into 833,924 total web threats. Even more, unique malicious URLs were seen in December at 93,999, which aggregated 749,956 threats.
Black Friday and Christmas sales in November and December influenced the rapid increase in web threats. Cybercriminals are particularly active during these seasons as they target e-commerce websites to steal customer personal information.
Cybersecurity writer at Atlas VPN Vilius Kardelis said: “The landscape of web threats has changed dramatically in recent years. Smart devices and high-speed mobile networks have enabled an always-connected route of malware, fraud, and other compromises. The top concern that continues to pose new risks to security and privacy is the lack of caution when using the web.”
Most popular web threats
Cybercriminals can employ different types of web threats to target people’s devices.
JavaScript (JS) downloaders were observed to have 61,283 unique malicious URLs, which accumulated 726,372 total threats from October to December 2021.
From the total of 628,725 crypto miner threats, 59,550 were unique malicious URLs. Web miners that operate in internet browsers demand substantial CPU resources, causing computer use to be exceedingly slow.
Next up, 328,310 web threats were collected from 26,614 unique URLs with web skimmers. JavaScript redirectors amassed 115,497 web threats, of which 4,097 were unique malicious URLs. Finally, web scams accumulated 86,999 total threats, of which 15,130 were unique malicious URLs.

Three reasons the security industry is protecting the wrong thing

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Why is it that the security industry talks about network security, but data breaches? It’s clear that something needs to change, and according to Paul German, CEO, Certes Networks, the change is simple. For too long now, organisations have been focusing on protecting their network, when in fact they should have been protecting their data. Paul outlines three reasons why the securityindustry has been protecting the wrong thing and what they can do to secure their data as we move into 2021…

Reason one: They’re called data breaches, not network breaches, for a reason 

Looking back on some of the biggest data breaches the world has ever seen, it’s clear that cyber hackers always seem to be one step ahead of organisations that seemingly have sufficient protection and technology in place. From the Adobe data breach way back in 2013 that resulted in 153 million user records stolen, to the Equifax data breach in 2017 that exposed the data of 147.9 million consumers, the lengthy Marriott International data breach that compromised the data from 500 million customers over four years, to the recent Solarwinds data breach at the end of 2020, over time it’s looked like no organisation is exempt from the devastating consequences of a cyber hack.

When these breaches hit the media headlines, they’re called ‘data breaches’, yet the default approach to data security for all these organisations has been focused on protecting the network – to little effect. In many cases, these data breaches have seen malicious actors infiltrate the organisation’s network, sometimes for long periods of time, and then have their pick of the data that’s left unprotected right in front of them. 

So what’s the rationale behind maintaining this flawed approach to data protection? The fact is that current approaches mean it is simply not possible to implement the level of security that sensitive data demands as it is in transit without compromising network performance. Facing an either/or decision, companies have blindly followed the same old path of attempting to secure the network perimeter, and hoping that they won’t suffer the same fate as so many before them.

However, consider separating data security from the network through an encryption-based information assurance overlay. Meaning that organisations can seamlessly ensure that even when malicious actors enter the network, the data will still be unattainable and unreadable, keeping the integrity, authentication and confidentiality of the data intact without impacting overall performance of the underlying infrastructure.

Reason two: Regulations and compliance revolve around data 

Back in 2018, GDPR caused many headaches for businesses across the world. There are numerous data regulations businesses must adhere to, but GDPR in particular highlighted how important it is for organisations to protect their sensitive data. In the case of GDPR, organisations are not fined based on a network breach; in fact, if a cyber hacker were to enter an organisation’s network but not compromise any data, the organisation wouldn’t actually be in breach of the regulation at all.

GDPR, alongside many other regulations such as HIPAA, CCPA, CJIS or PCI-DSS, is concerned with protecting data, whether it’s financial data, healthcare data or law enforcement data. The point is: it all revolves around data, but the way in which data needs to be protected will depend on business intent. With new regulations constantly coming into play and compliance another huge concern for organisations as we continue into 2021, protecting data has never been more important, but by developing an intent-based policy, organisations can ensure their data is being treated and secured in a way that will meet business goals and deliver provable and measurable outcomes, rather than with a one-size-fits-all approach.

Reason three: Network breaches are inevitable, but data breaches are not

Data has become extremely valuable across all business sectors and the increase in digitisation means that there is now more data available to waiting malicious actors.

From credit card information to highly sensitive data held about law enforcement cases and crime scenes, to data such as passport numbers and social ID numbers in the US, organisations are responsible for keeping this data safe for their customers, but many are falling short of this duty. With the high price tag that data now has, doing everything possible to keep data secure seems like an obvious task for every CISO and IT Manager to prioritise, yet the constant stream of data breaches shows this isn’t the case. 

But what can organisations do to keep this data safe? To start with, a change in mindset is needed to truly put data at the forefront of all cyber security decisions and investments. Essential questions a CISO must ask include: Will this solution protect my data as it travels throughout the network? Will this technology enable data to be kept safe, even if hackers are able to infiltrate the network? Will this strategy ensure the business is compliant with regulations regarding data security, and that if a network breach does occur, the business won’t risk facing any fines? The answer to these questions must be yes in order for any CISO to trust that their data is safe and that their IT security policy is effective.

Furthermore, with such a vast volume of data to protect, real-time monitoring of the organisation’s information assurance posture is essential in order to react to an issue, and remediate it, at lightning speed. With real-time, contextual meta-data, any non-compliant traffic flows or policy changes can be quickly detected on a continuous basis to ensure the securityposture is not affected, so that even if an inevitable network breach occurs, a data breach does not follow in its wake.

Trusting information assurance

An information assurance approach that removes the misdirected focus on protecting an organisation’s network and instead looks at protecting data, is the only way that the securityindustry can move away from the damaging data breaches of the past. There really is no reason for these data breaches to continue hitting the media headlines; the technology needed to keep data secure is ready and waiting for the industry to take advantage of. The same way that no one would leave their finest jewellery on display in the kitchen window, or leave their passport out for the postman to see, organisations must safeguard their most valuable asset and protect themselves and their reputation from suffering the same fate as many other organisations that have not protected their data. 

Impact of COVID-19 on physical security market revealed

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A new report delivers what it calls the best estimate of the global market for physical security products going forward to 2025, based on two scenarios.

In March 2020, The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Within a few weeks, it was clear that the pandemic was highly likely to cause the world’s worst recession in the last 100 years. In June 2020, the World Bank published a baseline forecast envisioning a 5.2% contraction in global GDP in 2020.

The report from ResearchandMarkets says that, at this time, COVID-19 has been having second spikes in Q3 / Q4 and several countries are experiencing rolling lockdowns and believes its 2nd scenario looks more feasible where global markets take around a year to return to some normality and mass global adoption of a vaccine is achieved within 18 months. The publisher believes this has a probability of 65%.

Based on its Scenario 2, growth will recover by Q3 2021, and by the end of that year it will have grown by nearly 3%. However, different rates of growth apply in each of the 3 businesses and geographic territories. The analyst forecasts the market will reach over $42Bn by the end of 2025 at a CAGR of 6% over the next 5 years.

China continues to increase its share of the physical security product market. The Chinese market has grown rapidly through a boom in new construction and ‘Sharp Eyes’ surveillance projects driven by the public sector. However very little of this vastly expanding market is accessible to overseas manufacturers, nor is it likely to be in the foreseeable future, with ongoing political and trade tensions between the US and China.

Key Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic on Physical Security:

  • Above all the COVID-19 outbreak will force suppliers to radically rethink how they operate their business, in particular resilience to externalities. In parallel, there will be lessons to learn on having a more coordinated and resilient supply chain. The Video Surveillance business is too dependent on Chinese OEMs and component manufacturers. With many of these factories closed for the first two months of 2020, it caused temporary supply chain issues.
  • The pandemic has created a demand for new solutions to help control the spread of the virus. Physical security products have risen to the challenge, helping to implement social distancing protocols through existing access and video systems with AI-powered analytics. Thermal cameras have also been deployed to measure people’s temperature, with demand being strong. However, their usefulness has been questioned, with the World Health Organisation saying that on its own temperature screening “may not be very effective”.
  • The report estimates that the total value of world production of Physical Security products at factory gate prices in 2020 will be $31.7Bn, a decline of over 7.5% on 2019. Sales declined over the first 3 quarters of 2020 as a result of COVID-19. This has stopped 11 consecutive years of growth.

Demand for datacentre solutions set to rebound post-COVID

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A return to pre-COVID levels of confidence regarding future demand for datacentres was an encouraging finding from the latest independent industry survey, which captures the views of over 3,000 senior datacentre professionals across Europe, including owners, operators, developers, consultants and end users.

The Winter Report 2020/21, now in its 13th Year is undertaken by independent research house IX Consulting and commissioned by BCS, (Business Critical Solutions) the specialist services provider to the digital infrastructure industry.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that 2021 will see an increase in demand, up on the 40% recorded last year, and now back in line with the long-term trending average. Over the past six months, just over 90% of developer and investor/funder respondents reported an increase in their portfolio of technical real estate, the fourth successive survey that a similar proportion has been achieved, with 85% stating that they expect to see a further expansion over the coming year. This represents a significant recovery from the 45% reported six months ago and sits above the long-term average of around 70% monitored during the decade.

James Hart, CEO at BCS, said: “From the current survey it is encouraging that the reaction which we recorded last year at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic regarding future demand levels for datacentres, has been partially reversed in our latest findings. 

“If there is one thing the coronavirus has proven, it is that when faced with a truly urgent imperative, both the public and private sectors can adapt at astonishing speed and scale. Central to that response has been the data centre which has been the engine room enabling the health response, the mass home working effort, maintaining degrees of business continuity as well as keeping disparate families in contact. Last year our industry showed its resilience, agility and relevance, and this will be the lasting legacy of the pandemic for our sector.”

In addition to the impact of Covid-19 on the industry, other sections of the report include responses on: the threats to the industry; the ranking of choice factors for new datacentres; key drivers for change such as 5G; and further predictions for 2021 and beyond.

Copies of the report can be downloaded at: https://www.bcs.uk.com/data-centre-survey-covid-19-the-lasting-legacy