Getting teams to improve security can be hard work, but it’s an important job that organisations must take seriously to protect an increasingly risky world. For this post, I wanted to explore some ways that an organisation or individual might start building a new security “habit” so that, in time, acting securely becomes automatic.

Now that the ongoing worldwide trend toward “going digital” has been accelerated by COVID-19, taking extra precautions to protect your organization’s data, communications and information assets is more important than ever. Of course, there are many traditional and emerging ways to protect and secure your business.

Lately, I have seen fewer call outs from our field teams to our solution engineering team, and I was wondering what could be the reason? Sometimes, our field engineers approach our solution engineering team with advanced requests for data analysis, running what-if scenarios and assessing the quality of data and what new value can be gleaned by combining related datasets.

Data privacy regulation has made great steps toward protecting the privacy of people using web products, but it has come with user experience friction. Consent and disclosure banners are a solution for compliance, but they are not elegant. Browser makers, the W3C, and a group of participating organizations are working to fix that. The first step is a proposal called Global Privacy Control (GPC).

The “Dark Web” is often portrayed as a gloomy realm of internet land where you can find criminals and offenders lurking around every corner. Though there is some truth to this perception, there are also many misconceptions about the Dark Web and its role in the security or insecurity of businesses. Furthermore, the continuous embracement of remote work has led to an unexpected shift in the way the dark web is being used today.

Automation, when done properly, can improve the productivity, quality, safety and security in your software development. Automation isn’t just a “nice-to-have” element of modern business. It’s a “must-have.” Companies simply can’t compete on multiple levels—quality, speed to market, safety, and security—if they rely on manual tools and processes.

The definition of security awareness is likely broader and deeper than your organization may realize. Security awareness aims to address one of the trickiest weak points in your organization: its people. Security awareness is intended to change behavior and reinforce good security practices among your employees and other third parties. In short, it should be a cultural change.

For as long as businesses have used computers, cybersecurity has been crucial. Now, as modern business and data are becoming inseparable, it’s an absolute necessity. As companies start to recover from 2020 losses, they should consider investing in security updates. Cybercrime reached new heights in the past year, with internet crime reports rising 69.4% and costing more than $4.2 billion. Now that more companies are embracing digital services after the pandemic, this trend will likely continue.

With the need to produce innovative software faster than ever, and cyberattacks not slowing down, it’s no surprise that, for projects large and small, ensuring the security of your code at every step is key. But if software engineers want to meet these everyday demands with success, it’s important to understand how different security scanning types fit in throughout the development process, and how the needs of your team might impact scans.

The past year has challenged us in unimaginable ways. We kept our distance for the greater good, while companies faced the daunting task of transforming their workforce from in-person to remote — practically overnight. This presented a unique challenge for cybersecurity teams. How would they ensure employees retained access to critical data in a secure way? Working in the cloud has made remote work easier for many organizations, but has also presented new risks.