As we come to the conclusion of October and National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, now is a perfect time as an IT community to come together and reflect upon what has happened in 2020 & start thinking about the future.

By looking at everything that happened this year in terms of cybersecurity, Microsoft anticipates 5 paradigm shifts that will support the evolution of jobs centered on people and data inclusiveness, including:

1️⃣ Digital Empathy- This year, with all its changes to daily lives, has been very taxing emotionally. It is best to apply empathy to digital situations and build tools to accommodate everyone’s circumstances.

2️⃣ Zero Trust- With everyone spread out and working from all sorts of locations, shifting to a Zero Trust model and taking an “assume breach” posture is imperative.

3️⃣ Diversity of data- This makes it easier to understand COVID-19 themed attacks in a broader context.

4️⃣ Cyber Resilience- Build out a resilient plan of combating threats. Prepare all employees and management for any scenario.

5️⃣ Integrated security- To uncover shifting attacker techniques and stop them before they do real damage, organizations need to be able to see across their apps, endpoints, network, and users.