You know the euphoria — when you bought that new gadget, brought it home, followed the instructions, and for some unknown reason, it worked! We all get excited in those moments because we have all lived the other side of that coin — when we show the Wi-Fi connection only to realize we are not connected to the internet. Or, when the printer stops working after we have printed something this morning.
Let us all sing together that there is no digital frustration like frustration.
If the message is not received. When the call doesn’t go through. When the email bounces as “undeliverable” (or its more annoying cousin, “your email has been delayed”). If the formatting of that document is now completely unreadable. When you know you are connected to the projector, but you still don’t see an image.
No matter how good you are at technology, there are those days — and those days make us dangerous.
Those days cause us to trade doing things securely for the myopia of “making it work.” Tedium and frustration are the sleeper agents of cybercriminals. They make us lose our guard and can put us at great risk professionally and personally. Although it might seem like a good idea to bypass security measures in order to complete a document, there may be hidden costs.
The more advanced technology becomes, the more we will begin to understand the notion of “Digital Darwinism.” That is the concept that we live in an era where the mix of technology and society evolves faster than businesses can naturally adapt.
This is more evident than in the way businesses handle security risks. When technology does not do our bidding, frustration can cause us to get sloppy because we “just want it to work.” That sloppiness is a holdover from what we do at home. A common practice is to install a wireless router at home and unpack it. Once all connections are made, the consumer may be delighted when the router works. This same consumer probably never took the time to change the default administrator password. The network is now as insecure as before the change.
These best practices need to be in place long before frustration arises. Here are a few examples:
- “Make it work … securely. You could save some frustration by bypassing your antivirus. However, this is the same as riding without a seatbelt. If you find problems, please contact your IT department. They will most likely be able to make things work, provided it doesn’t compromise security.
- Slow. It. Down. Everybody should take a deep, slowing down. Slow it down. Think. It is something that we all experience and believe in. Continue clicking could only make things worse. Your ally is to keep calm.
- When the only option is a replacement, don’t hesitate to take the plunge. In the last month, six clients saved their way out of crisis. That is not something you want to do. All six cases saw the money they saved being wiped out in the first week after an attack. Sometimes replacing old tech that isn’t secure can be one of your best investments.
In tech, things can go wrong. It goes with the territory — but the tech does not control your security. That is up to you. Remember — action beats reaction every time.
Arkansas IT services company Mark Hodges has Mark Hodges as chief growth officer Edafio Technology Partners. The author’s opinions are theirs.