2019- What Do We See?
Here are 3 areas that are important for next year:
1. Change management.
Although trite, it’s true that the only constant in today’s business world is change.
Today, we’re learning that keeping up with technology requires constantly changing the way we develop, sell and support our products and services.
More importantly, this change requires new kinds of leaders who take accountability, communicate well up and down the organization, who prepare and respond positively to the unexpected, who create working, effective cultures and who speak to the individual within each person they encounter.
Change management has often been looked at as a program that is created around a new technical implementation, but in today’s environment change management is just plain, good management.
In 2019, you will see this management style lauded more and more as technology executives attempt to move companies from industrialized environments to digitalized ones. Artificial intelligence and machine learning coupled with robotic processing automation are creating opportunities to move companies faster into the digital age and this creates change.
2. Security and privacy.
These two concepts go hand in hand but never in history have they been more important to individuals as well as companies.
It’s important to know the key differences between these two terms.
- Security usually relates to tangible assets.
- Privacy relates to intangible assets. In the digital world, however, an individual’s desire for privacy and security are driving these two worlds together in cyber security.
In 2019, look for security and privacy to be linked as nation states flex their muscles in the digital world.
Note what the Chinese and Russians are doing in this area. Watch for companies like Microsoft to bolster security features in their popular applications.
Also look out for more consolidations of security firms and for those consolidations to begin melding corporate armors that protect companies against all manner of threats. Watch also for consulting companies to join forces in helping tie systems with corporate cultures to help companies better understand where, when and how to deploy secure systems.
Best example of this is Symantec and EY’s recent partnership announcement.
3. Rise of Cyber-ethics.
Cyber-ethics is the study of ethics applied to computing.
It speaks to user behavior as well as what computers are programmed to do and how this affects everyone. Like Pandora’s Box, the internet unleashes both good and evil.
Our ability to deal with this phenomenon has not kept up with the technology itself. A similar problem occurred when cameras were invented in the 1800s.
In the late 19th century, the invention of cameras spurred similar ethical debates as the internet does today.
Cameras had social impacts on who was seen at an event (or not) and what exactly was happening at least from the photographer’s point of view. Cameras recorded images of loved ones so effectively that American Indians believed that their souls would be captured and held captive if their pictures were taken.
The camera had both positive and negative impacts on society. Positive impacts included the increase and value of communications. But cameras and film had negative impacts on the environment, especially with the way film was processed.
Today, digital photography retains the positive impacts of increased communication and erases the negative environmental ones.
But how we use photographs and videos is still an area that we have not completely addressed, and this is where cyberethics plays.
Three areas that get the most attention include:
- Downloading/copyright protection
- Hacking
- Cyber-bulling.
In 2019, look for more awareness to be driven around cyberbulling and hacking. These topics are high on the government’s agenda as Americans attempt to apply the Golden Rule to our use of the internet.
Today’s world of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data in unprecedented volumes causes us to pause on this eve of 2019 and enter this last year of the second decade of the 21stcentury with both trepidation and excitement.
As noted, keeping up with change, managing ourselves and our companies, as well as ensuring our security, privacy and applying ethical behavior to our digital activities makes 2019 a year of exciting challenges.
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