Emerging Cybersecurity Training Priorities in a COVID-19-Impacted Business Landscape
In spite of initial optimism, real challenges abound
In spite of many respondents’ cautious optimism, around 25%of firms reported that they would be postponing any interviews and recruitment for open positions; around 18% said they were cutting back hours of full or part-time staff and nearly one in seven were laying off contractors or suspending their work. A similar portion (17% in April, dropping to 13% in June) reported that they were laying off full- or part-time staff.
And in spite of the general optimismexpressed, eight in 10 businesses reported that they were impacted in significant ways, to include: customers cancelling or postponing spending (43% inMarch, rising to 58% in June); customers requesting restructuring of contracts and payment terms (26% inMarch, rising to 46% in June); alongwith lesser-reported disruptions like shortages of finished products; vendors or partners cancelling or postponing financial arrangements; and requests from investors or lending institutions for updated sustainability plans. It is evident from these surveys that the initial optimismabout firms’ ability to quickly and readily shift to a newworking environment has been dampened somewhat by a host of real-time challenges that emerged during the shift itself. In other words, it was relatively easy to ask employees towork fromhome for the foreseeable future; it has proven extremely difficult to effectively reconfigure the entire way inwhich a firmoperates whilemitigating new and emerging business challenges and cybersecurity threats. This crisis, if nothing else, has highlighted for firms that simply having the technology is not enough.
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