When is Abnormal Normal?
The God, Wikipedia says “Normality is a behaviour that can be normal for an individual when it is consistent with the most common behaviour for that person. Normal is also used to describe individual behaviour that conforms to the most common behaviour in society” and “Abnormality is a behavioural characteristic assigned to those with conditions regarded as rare or dysfunctional. Behaviour is considered abnormal when it is atypical or out of the ordinary, consists of undesirable behaviour, and results in impairment in the individual's functioning”
May 2020 and it looks like our usual day has become abnormal and the unusual day has become the new normal. So now abnormality has become our Normal.
It is amazing how quickly things can change and become accepted.
In times of crisis people, organisations, governments become empowered to make decisions for the greater good, even when there is risk associated with those actions.
If we look at this from cyber risk perspective 3 things come to mind
End users are being empowered to get “techy” – whether that is setting up zoom sessions, configuring cameras, virtual backgrounds, wireless access remote printing. A few months ago, this would have been the domain of the IT team but in these times its needs must.
BYOD – Corporate IT have always been cautious, and rightly so about non corporate devices accessing the network, the last couple of months, with a worldwide shortage of laptops, has seen ALL devices that can get the user online being welcomed as a valuable asset
The hackers and fraudsters are highly entrepreneurial, they are quick to spot an opportunity and act upon it. We have seen a real spike in malicious emails and cyber attacks centred around the Covid 19 Pandemic.
What we cannot afford to do in this new normal is let our cyber guard down, we have the tools and technology to support this new way of working and we will continue to do so.
No one has a crystal ball so it is difficult to predict what happens next, the consensus however is that things will never quite get back to way things were.
We can all see that large numbers of people can effectively work from home, before this all started the health of the planet was number 1 on the agenda.
The planet has certainly been a winner in all this, demand for Oil is at an all time low, air travel, commuter traffic virtually stopped across the world.
The speed and impact of this Pandemic are going to shape our world for years to come, imagine now if the lock down were lifted, what would you do with you staff? How would you get things back to normal, what would be the new normal?
We all need to consider what that may look like for us, we need to consider the changes that the current pandemic bring and the impact these will have on our home lives, our work lives, our travel lives, our educational lives and our social lives.
Do we stagger our workforces to create more social distancing in our offices?
Does “working from home” need to be built into people’s Terms of employment?
What changes do we need to make to our infrastructure, technology and Cyber protection?
We need to review and plan how we protect ourselves going forward. Technology is now “The” enabler, cyber security and compliance, and how it is delivered and managed must alter in order to align with the changes in our lives.
Along with my team here at Renaissance we will be facing those questions, and more over the coming weeks, we are here to help other business as we all journey together towards our collective new normal.