If there has been one perceived drawback to advances in communication technology, it has been that emailing, texting and instant messaging has replaced face-to-face communication. As a result, relationships aren’t as strong as in the past. Thanks to the emergence of video conferencing as a core collaboration technology, this trend is being reversed.

Transcending fantasy, AI concepts expanding into real-world usage.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is usually associated with human-like computers such as Isaac Asimov’s positronic robots and the Star Wars droids. In truth, AI has moved way beyond the realm of fantasy and into the mainstream thanks to a range of new products, technologies and applications.

Security training plays a critical role in improving an organization’s cybersecurity posture.

Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) are aware of the dangers of cyberattacks, and most are doing everything they can to beef up security. But is that enough?

Installing antivirus software and occasionally warning employees not to open suspicious emails won’t protect sensitive data or satisfy a growing number of regulatory requirements.

As cloud spending and governance issues mount, more organizations turn to managed services providers.

It is now almost universally accepted that cloud computing is the ideal model for the consumption of IT resources. According to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera, 94 percent of businesses across all verticals are using cloud in some form, 84 percent have a multi-cloud strategy using an average of five different cloud platforms, and almost 80 percent of all workloads now run in the cloud.

K-12 schools are collecting and storing more and more information about students, including personally identifiable information, behavioral assessments and health data, as well as grades, test scores and attendance. This data is a critical resource for evaluating students and developing personalized learning programs.

According to a recent report on data breaches in the U.S., the personally identifiable information (PII) of consumers remains the top target of cybercriminals. A whopping 97 percent of all breaches in 2018 involved the exposure of PII. Almost half (48 percent) of breaches affected the healthcare sector, while the cost of breaches in the financial sector jumped from $8 million in Q1 2018 to $6.2 billion in Q1 2019.

The increased exposure of PII comes despite a 12.4 percent increasein spending on security products and services.

According to a recent report from Internet Trends, 87 percent of all global web traffic in the first quarter of 2019 was encrypted. That’s a significant increase from 53 percent just three years earlier. Some industry analysts believe the entire Internet will be encrypted within five to 10 years.

Shadow IT is a growing threat, largely because organizations vastly underestimate the size and scope of the issue. According to one Cisco study, large organizations use an average of more than 1,200 different cloud-based applications and services — more than 13 times the number recognized by their IT departments.

According to the FBI’s 2018 Internet Crime Report, the financial losses associated with Internet crime increased by 90.8 percent from 2017 to 2018. The highest losses came from business email compromise (BEC) and email account compromise scams, with 20,373 victims losing a total of $1.3 billion.

Cloud options becoming essential for managing rampant data growth.

Driven by new workloads and the convergence of cloud, mobile, analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT), the digital universe is growing at an astonishing pace. Analysts with IDC anticipate that by 2025 the total amount of digital data created worldwide will reach 180 zettabytes — or 180 trillion gigabytes.