Biggest threats to transforming organisations are email fraud and phishing

Emile Abou Saleh, Regional Director, Middle East and Africa for Proofpoint.

The rapidly evolving pace of digital transformation promises new levels of efficiency, agility, and responsiveness for your organisation, your supply chain, and your customers. But these opportunities can quickly backfire if you do not account for a variety of new and evolving cybersecurity risks.

For every new software-as-a-service, SaaS platform to make your users more productive, another type of malware emerges to target your data. For every new digital platform, you use to enhance customer experience, a new wave of impostors arrives, leveraging your organisation’s hard won good name to compromise and defraud, across email, the web, social media, and mobile apps. Not to mention, the biggest, most persistent threat since the digital age began: email fraud and phishing. 

Digital transformation cannot be successful without taking security, compliance, and fraud risk into account. And it can be especially challenging when you do not own the infrastructure. The potential for digital transformation to disrupt business for the better is truly staggering. And like any smart business decision, it requires understanding and managing the risks.

Adding more complexity to today’s security challenge is the fact that digital transformation has moved both data and attacks to the cloud. Legacy technologies do not grant the threat intelligence or preventative action needed to effectively combat today’s advanced threats.

Proofpoint’s competence is in email security, but to keep pace with the global cyberthreat landscape and the evolution of digital transformation, we have evolved to a next-generation cybersecurity company offering a cloud-based platform to protect companies against the number one threat vector, email, as well as emerging vectors such as social media and cloud apps. 

With an integrated suite of cloud-based solutions, Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyberattacks. 

Proofpoint’s differentiator is that we look at cybersecurity with a people-centric view and focus on solutions that protect an organisation’s most targeted individuals. 

Built on the cloud and the world’s most advanced intelligence platform, Proofpoint solutions stop 99% of attachment-based attacks. Every day, they detect and block threats and compliance risks in more than 600 million emails, more than seven million mobile apps and hundreds of thousands of social-media accounts. 

Proofpoint is one of the top five cybersecurity companies in the world. Our solutions are used by more than 6,000 customers globally, including more than 50% of the global Fortune 1000, 21% of the FTSE 100 and seven of the top 10 European banks. 

Digital transformation and the ever-increasing role of technology within organisations is changing the way we do business. More than ever, an organisation’s success hinges on the strength and reliability of your connections— between your workers, with your business partners, and to your customers.

Technology has become a truly transversal element across all business functions and it is critical for any organisation’s success. As more companies compete in technology-enabled business environments, organisations must drive growth by leveraging technology advancements. 

Although it is paramount to embrace the new paradigm where business and technology come together to collaborate, innovate and co-create new sources of value, it is also vital that organisations consider the new cybersecurity risks that come hand-in-hand with evolving technologies. 

Digital transformation is changing competitive boundaries, market entrants are forming unexpected alliances, and consumers are empowered with innovations in personalised technology. With this disruption comes the need for transformational leadership. 

Being familiar with the disruptions and risks driven by technology, business leaders need to constantly find new ways of leveraging technology for business transformation and growth. In order to achieve it, business leaders must understand how the business operates to contribute to discussions about how technology can enable business growth. 

Additionally, it is equally important for business leaders to understand the complexity of managing technology as well as leveraging those technologies to set them apart from their competitors while managing cost or risk exposure.


Highlights

  • Business leaders need to find new ways of leveraging technology for business transformation and growth.
  • Business leaders must understand how business operates to contribute to discussions about how technology can enable business growth.
  • Business leaders must understand complexity of managing technology to set them apart from their competitors.
  • It is paramount to embrace when business and technology come together to collaborate, also vital to consider new risks that come hand-in-hand.

By Emile Abou Saleh, Regional Director, Middle East and Africa for Proofpoint.