On Sunday June 12, Sentia sponsored and participated in the 2022 Mental Health in Motion Ride, Walk and Run event hosted by the Canadian Mental Health Association of York and Simcoe.

After a long two-year hiatus, we were delighted to be back in-person with other like-minded individuals all in support for a worthy cause. The rain had threatened to put a ‘damper’ on the event (pun intended), but it fortunately held off for the entire duration of the ride, walk and run.

The cyber risk landscape continues to evolve at an alarming rate. Cyber adversaries are leveraging new technologies to innovate powerful malware variants and new hacking techniques. On the other hand, a pervasive cybersecurity talent shortage hampers organizations’ efforts to secure their critical infrastructure and data from attacks. However, companies can mitigate the chronic shortage of knowledgeable cybersecurity professionals by prioritizing talent, expertise, and experience over the traditional hiring practices, including those that require minimum educational qualifications.

The financial industries of most countries worldwide use emerging innovative technologies to cut down operational costs, enhance customer services, and automate work. For example, organizations in the Canadian financial sector heavily depend on Fintech, the Internet of Things, quantum computing, the cloud, and artificial intelligence, among others, to enable electronic financial transactions and data transfer between payment systems, institutions, vendors, and clients.

However, while these interconnections promise increased efficiency and faster communications, they have become attractive targets in today’s highly sophisticated and rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape. For example, a cyberattack that compromises only one financial organization can potentially spread to external partners, which may ultimately disrupt critical international and national financial systems.

Unsurprisingly, motivations like financial gains from transaction values that amount to billions of dollars daily have seen the financial industry face frequent and complex cyberattacks. For instance, Canada’s population has embraced online banking transactions more and more, with 76% of Canadians preferring mobile devices and online banking for all transactions.

In the past, the real estate industry has been known to be slow in embracing technology. However, this situation is changing. The PwC report on Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2021 found that the COVID-19 pandemic forced the real estate sector to embrace various technology solutions, including virtual open houses, digital payments, collaboration tools, and property technology to enhance business continuity. Likewise, the Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2022 reports that Canadian real estate companies can successfully navigate forces of change through accelerated digitization that plays a significant role in both delivering efficiencies and creating the experiences and services the customers want. The latest report points out construction technology, increased data analytics, and digitizing operations as the key area of focus for the real estate sector in 2022.

Cybercrime has increased exponentially worldwide, mostly due to significant events that lead to a rapidly changing threat landscape. Most nations have seen increased cyber threats across sectors due to significant incidents ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with the retail industry bearing the brunt of the attacks. In Canada, for instance, at least three out of ten companies have reported a spike in attacks, and 80% of businesses fell victim to phishing attacks. Also, 25% of Canadian organizations have reported data breaches that target sensitive employee and customer data.

In addition, Canadian organizations in the retail industry have suffered numerous attacks in the recent past. For example, JBS, one of the largest global, suffered a devastating ransomware attack in 2021 that saw it shut down operations in Canada, the US, and Australia, resulting in a loss of more than $11 million. Also, an unauthorized party compromised the user credentials of the Canada Revenue Agency, resulting in more than 800,000 taxpayers being unable to access their accounts. Whether you look at cybersecurity in Montreal, Toronto, or any other Canadian city, the statistics show that cybercrime is getting worse, and the retail industry suffers innumerable damage.

The past decade has seen a major transformation in the realm of enterprise network and security.  The traditional data center approach no longer fits the changing landscape that we are in today. With cloud-based security solutions and with the pandemic elevating the need to work and access devices and applications virtually, the need for enterprise network security to become more agile and adapt accordingly has become more important than ever. 

According to Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud report, for the 5th year in a row, optimizing cloud is the top initiative for the year ahead, with migrating more workloads to the cloud a close second.

Even if your business doesn’t operate 24/7, chances are your IT infrastructure does. Consider Sentia’s Managed services to meet the unique needs of your business.

The world is slowly beginning to reopen, and organizations are making decisions on what the post-pandemic workplace looks like. As many organizations look to bring their staff back into the office, others will opt for hybrid models or stick with full-time remote teams. Currently, millions of employees in Canada work from home full time with no end in sight, and many employees wish to continue working remotely once the pandemic ends

Peculiarly, the language used by senior management in quarterly earnings calls with investors and analysts placed the remote work discussion central in the public companies' earnings calls in 2021. This discussion was perceptibly limited in the years before 2020, and it is not a stretch to say that modern history will reference the year as a turning point. Many CEOs now view remote work in a favorable light, a sign that it is here to stay. Some companies that have announced they will allow, encourage, or require employees to work from home permanently include Shopify, Twitter, Facebook, Square, Coinbase, Upwork, AWeber, Otis, and Amazon.

“If security were all that mattered, computers would never be turned on, let alone hooked into a network with literally millions of potential intruders.” - Dan Farmer, Cyber Security Analyst, Researcher, Programmer

Cyber threats are an inevitable risk constantly within our orbit in various forms and degrees of sophistication. Organizations of all sizes are prone to an attack at some point - but the severity of the attack and the time it takes to recover from one, all starts from within: Organizational policy review, revision, and enforcement.

The ‘new normal’ is more than a catchphrase at this point. It's a whole new way of life. And the reality is that we really don’t know exactly how our businesses will be affected long-term. However, one thing we can predict is that staying flexible using scalable solutions and creating a solid online presence are two things that will help businesses navigate the current crisis and beyond.