To be more secure, we need to learn together

With the move toward hybrid and remote work, the past 18 months have been extremely challenging in terms of cybersecurity. I have spoken to many customers and individuals dealing with these challenges. And they’re plentiful: Security professionals have found themselves with more endpoints to manage and secure. Meanwhile, threat actors are exploiting gaps anywhere they can. Working in a hybrid setting also adds a physical threat level. I’m sure you have asked yourself these questions as well: Which devices and documents can leave the office? Or: How can we ensure confidentiality in a shared co-working space?

There is no doubt: the complexity of these questions will increase as more and more organizations embrace hybrid work. This is why I think it’s great that Microsoft participates in Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This awareness is important because the days when security was an issue for the IT department to deal with are long gone. IT security is a business issue and must therefore also be on the list of priorities at the highest level in the company.

Our focus this year is on education and training. Every individual can contribute to the overall security – be it in a company or elsewhere. With more workers using personal and corporate devices interchangeably, it is even more important to be aware of these topics. And as new vulnerabilities arise, security for all becomes even more integral to organizational success.

This week, we have also published the Microsoft Digital Defense Report : Our research shows that the cybercrime market will continue to become more sophisticated and more specialized unless we all evolve our work to stop them. More work than ever is underway to counteract these concerns, but we will need to ensure they remain on the top of national and international agendas in the coming years.

On a local level, we need to continue the hard work in Switzerland together with our partners to ensure our customers have the right toolkit to counter these threats. In this sense, ransomware continues to be one of the largest cybercrime threats and in the past year it has continued to evolve to become more disruptive. I enjoy my discussions with Roger Halbheer, our Chief Security Advisor, on this topic. In his eyes, these attacks mostly succeed because IT security is not part of the core business of the users concerned. In addition, the potential threat is still generally underestimated in many places. Naturally, this is a problem small and medium businesses are especially faced with. And with 99 percent of Swiss businesses being SMBs, it is a Swiss problem.

On the upside, I see that many businesses and individuals have matured their view on cybersecurity. In all the conversation with customers I have, I feel that this topic is taken with the seriousness it deserves. In addition, the general public has improved their awareness: The number of tech support scam in Switzerland has decreased according to our study , for example. In this context, it is also important to call out the release of Windows 11, empowering people and organizations to be even more secure. But I will share more on that soon.

I am convinced one thing is certain: I believe security is a team effort and we need to continue to learn together to make the world a safer place. Therefore, I am already looking forward to our Swiss Security Week starting November 16th., where our customers and partners will come together to talk about a broad variety of security topics. I will also join Roger Halbheer for an in-depth discussion on hybrid work and cybersecurity. Tune in here!