Who, for example, can imagine a world without zip fasteners? Yet following its public debut as the ‘clasp locker’ at 1893’s Chicago World’s Fair, it was 30 years before what is now by far the world’s most widespread fastener began to enjoy any real commercial success.
History is littered with examples of technologies which, when they first appeared, led their early adopters to be ridiculed, but which ultimately proved indispensable. Move the story forward 80 years, and when the earliest mobile phones were introduced their users were openly laughed at in the street.
This initial skepticism shows no signs of abating. Why would you want to send someone an email when you can phone them or post a document instead? Why would you need a touch screen when a physical keyboard does the same job? Why would you want a satnav when a map can guide you to where you want to go? And why would you talk to a voice assistant when you can use Google to find what you want?
The answer in every case is that the new solution is faster, more convenient and, well, just better. So why is it that even when so many new technologies have proven their advantages, people are still reluctant to embrace the next? Why are accidents involving self-driving cars, for example, so widely reported, when those driven by humans claim over a million lives each year?
Put simply, it’s the power of the status quo. We like solutions we feel comfortable with, and we’re generally reluctant to change. But then, as the curve moves upward and early adopters become the early majority, a tipping point is reached. What was once a tool for geeks is now a must-have – hence the iPhone’s phenomenal success.
So what happens if you’re in an environment which is changing so fast that standing still isn’t an option, and can even be a threat?
That’s exactly the situation in cybersecurity.
Cybercriminals are constantly refining their methods. The costs of mounting more advanced attacks are reducing. And that means organizations which may have felt they were too small to attract attention are now very much on the cybercriminals’ radar.
To take just one example, for many businesses whose current protection is limited to an endpoint protection platform (EPP), the warning signs are out there that it’s time to enhance their defense.
To take just one example, for many businesses whose current protection is limited to an endpoint protection platform (EPP), the warning signs are out there that it’s time to enhance their defense.
A big warning sign is if their EPP is failing to stop increasing numbers of evasive threats. Or they have limited visibility into what’s happening on their endpoints. Or they want to develop detection and response capabilities, but lack the specialist technical skills or capacity needed to do this.
Despite these warnings, the power of the status quo persists. A business may have been using the same EPP for many years, and be understandably reluctant to move on. EPP’s natural companion, endpoint detection and response (EDR), can have a reputation for causing as many issues as it solves, by alerting organizations to volumes of threats they have neither the time nor expertise to resolve. And this can be a particular problem for organizations with limited in-house expertise.
But now a tipping point is being reached. EDR solutions are enabling automated responses to a wide variety of new, unknown and evasive threats - minimizing needs for specialist skills or additional resources. And managed detection and response (MDR) - which lets businesses outsource their most taxing security tasks through capabilities such as detection, guided response, managed threat hunting and 24/7 threat monitoring by industry-leading experts – is freeing up internal resources to focus on more important tasks.
If you’re an SMB or mid-size enterprise, you may be at risk from new, unknown and evasive threats including malware, ransomware and spyware that can compromise your systems and threaten your reputation.
Don’t let the power of the status quo undermine your defenses against these increasingly common threats.
Whether you want to strengthen your internal defenses or combat the latest threats with expert external guidance, Kaspersky can help. Our cloud-enabled Kaspersky Optimum Security lets you upgrade protection against new, unknown and evasive threats, through effective threat detection and response and 24/7 security monitoring, without prohibitive costs or complexity.
