Z Technology, a manufacturer of test and measurement equipment for the radio and television broadcast industry, appears to be fairly typical of the survey respondents. The 10-person company has no formal disaster-recovery plan, operations manager Dan Nicholas said. "I don't think it's ever been thought about a whole lot," Nicholas added. "It's not a conscious decision to not have one."
However, the survey found a strong, clear emphasis on data and systems protection among small businesses. Those businesses are acutely aware of the threat posed by viruses, hackers and system incursions. Of the 237 survey respondents, 88 or 37% say technology-driven threats "viruses, hackers, security breaches" pose the greatest danger that could interrupt the functioning of their business.
Other threats identified as the biggest concerns included disasters such as fires or explosions, selected by 27% of respondents; natural disasters such as weather and earthquakes, 26%; theft or loss of intellectual property, 7%; and other areas such as terrorism and a national emergency, 3%
FMSI Actuarial Concepts and Systems Inc. is indicative of the focus on protecting data and systems among small business. The Deerfield, Ill., company's three employees hold themselves accountable for backing up data from their workstations on a regular basis. Data gets backed up to two separate Web-based systems maintained by different outsourcing firms for an additional layer of protection. "If one is down, the other is not down at the same time," explains Gerry Kopelman, a partner.
While these backup procedures aren't explicitly defined, they are a part of the company's way of doing business. "There are no formal policies. It's just become our habit to do that. It's common sense," Kopelman says.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
