The Cybersecurity And Technology Leap

2016 is a Leap Year – but why do we call it a ‘Leap Year’?

Traditionally, it is known as such due to the fact that Christmas day ‘leaps’ over the day it would have typically fallen. So instead of being on a Saturday this year, Christmas has ‘leapt’ over to Sunday.

Do you remember what you were doing on the last February 29th, four years ago? Were you using the same technology you are now? Were you and your business facing the same challenges you are now in terms of connectivity and security, or have new ones arisen?

We have gathered insight from industry experts on what they were doing in the cybersecurity space on the last February 29th and how this has changed in the last four years…

Wieland Alge, VP & GM EMEA at Barracuda Networks

“Since the last leap year, Office 365 adoption has increased at an unprecedented pace. According to IDC analyst Darren Bibby, the Cloud-based email solution has seen year-on-year growth rates rise from just 4.5 percent in 2012 to 30 percent in 2015. Cloud-based mailboxes powered by Microsoft Exchange Server technology now represent 31 percent of all worldwide business cloud mailboxes.

“As Office 365 adoption continues to grow, businesses looking to move to the Cloud need to understand that the process of adopting Office 365 is a migration, not an upgrade. Devoting sufficient time, energy, and resources to planning the migration to is a critical best practice. Success relies on suitable preparation, sufficient technical knowledge, and a well-executed project plan.”

Doug Rich, VP EMEA, Tintri

“As we approach the 2016 leap year, we have an opportunity to look back at the past four years and see what trends took a leap for the better. In the storage industry, virtualisation has made the leap – around 40 percent of server workloads were virtualised in 2012, compared to around 75-80 percent in 2016.

“For storage admins, the next leap is to VM-aware storage (VAS) – built specifically for virtualisation – to fully realise performance improvements, cost reductions and management at scale. Highly virtualised enterprises and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have been quick to adopt VAS as a foundation technology.

“Looking further ahead to 2020, the next leap year, the storage landscape is bound to look very different. The battle for survival is heating up and more companies will either be acquired or forced to exit the market.

“And when it comes to storage decisions, new voices – notably DevOps – will take a seat at the table, as the pressure to speed development cycles intensifies. Storage doesn’t move in steps, it moves in leaps and bounds – it’s important for IT admins to be prepared for what’s to come.”

Tom Harwood, co-founder and chief product officer, Aeriandi

“A lot can change in four years, particularly where compliance and data security are concerned. Since 2012, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has been through a number of major and minor iterations to ensure it continues to provide robust guidelines on the protection of consumer payment information. The latest version of the standard (V3.2) is due to come into force in April this year and includes yet more new guidelines on multi-factor authentication alongside other key compliance criteria.

“Keeping up with the guidelines can be difficult, but the emergence of third-party PCI DSS compliance specialists is making it significantly easier to achieve and maintain compliance than it was just a few years ago. In fact, some solutions even allow organisations to de-scope large parts of their operations (such as the contact centre) entirely, by ensuring sensitive data never enters the environment in the first place. Rather than trying to go it alone, many businesses may find the compliance headache is significantly reduced through the correct partnership.

“Perhaps by the time the next leap year comes around, the threat of payment card fraud will be eliminated entirely through new security advancements at the card level. Until then, organisations should make sure that their compliance decisions are well informed and not a short term quick fix.”

How much do you know about cloud computing in 2016? Try our quiz!