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Our national Cybersecurity Practice engages in thousands of customer conversations each year, and a few themes consistently emerge as primary concerns. The information security industry is plagued with confusion, complexity, and challenge, to the point that 30% of enterprises worth over $25 billion report that they do not have an overall information security strategy—and that number is substantially worse for the typical organization. Keep in mind that this simply refers to an information security strategy. It does not factor in the ability to implement that strategy, or whether the strategy is comprehensive or effective. Worse, most organizations overestimate their cyber preparedness, and factors like the global workforce shortage, security start-up sprawl, and cloud confusion are stymieing the effective implementation of information security strategies.

It’s time to step up your game.

ConvergeOne recently announced the availability of ConvergeOne Secure Connect, our new software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) managed services offer. In a nutshell, Secure Connect is a subscription-based, fully-managed SD-WAN that connects our customers’ networks to ConvergeOne Cloud Experience (C1CX) collaboration solutions. I know what you may be thinking: What is SD-WAN? It’s one of those terms that we’ve all heard of before, but few know what it really is, and why it’s a hot topic. Let’s dive a little deeper into SD-WAN and explore why Secure Connect is such a cool offer.

Consumers are more informed than ever before, and their preferences and behaviors are constantly changing. They have dramatically higher expectations, demanding personalized service, more options, faster resolution, and a consistent experience across all channels of communication with a company. Customer loyalty is largely a prehistoric notion, given the ability for consumers to leverage and provide information and reviews online. In fact, according to LeadGenius, a customer’s first contact with a company is roughly 60% of the way through his decision timeline. As a result, companies are increasingly focused on syncing their brand pledge with the experience they deliver.

I have been working in the field of communications for a long time and have witnessed many significant changes over the years. Some ideas, like IP telephony, have revolutionized the industry. Others fell flat on their faces. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is one of those ideas that falls into the revolutionary camp. While still in its infancy, I predict that within a very short period of time, WebRTC applications will become a daily part of how we communicate.

Omnichannel is a big buzzword when it comes to one of the latest trends in contact centers and customer experience. I’m hearing a lot of vendors, partners, and even customers initiating the discussion. I get really excited when people bring it up, but sadly, I very quickly get deflated once I realize everything they’re talking about is actually just multichannel. So, I thought I’d take a look at some of the big differences between the two.

In the first and second parts of this blog series, we shared the importance of focusing on the basics in cybersecurity and shared some tips for how to get started. Let’s wrap up by sharing some additional considerations you should address as you get started on your path to a more secure enterprise.

In order to thrive in the coming years, most businesses must undergo digital transformation. According to Gartner, 67% of business leaders believe that in order to remain competitive, their organization will have to undergo significant digitalization by 2020. With digital initiatives serving as the top priority for 2019 according to Gartner's CIO Agenda 2019, it sounds like many organizations are already in the midst of successful digital transformation, right? Not so fast. Forrester Research reports a bleak state of digital transformation, with many companies failing to realize the full extent of their transformational opportunities.

When working with various customers on their wireless networks, I am often asked about the broadcasting of Service Set Identifiers (SSIDs) – or the name of the Wi-Fi network – as a security risk. At one time, broadcasting of SSIDs was seen as a security issue, and therefore almost everyone disabled broadcasting. Since that time, we have grown as an industry in our understanding of this practice to the point where it is generally considered best practice to broadcast SSIDs. As an example, PCI DSS v1.2 removed the requirement for SSIDs to be non-broadcast in order to be PCI compliant.

What role does the IT department play in your business? Does it contribute to strategic initiatives, or does it mostly provide day-to-day support for your users and systems?