identifying new technology trends . Perry Hutton , VP – Africa , Fortinet , talks us through what he believes should be the top IT priorities for the C-suite in the new year , as well as the key cybersecurity learnings from this extraordinary year .

What are the key cybersecurity learnings that we can take from this year , particularly in your region ?

The pandemic caused remote working to shift from being the exception to the norm in many workplaces . We need to understand and accept that working from home comes with massively increased cybersecurity because the negative impact of the pandemic will fall risks , such as malware infection , unauthorised access and insecure devices . Hackers and online scammers are taking advantage of these risks and cybercrimes are accelerating at the same sort of proportions as COVID was at its peak . Enterprises , governments , and any other organisations for that matter , have had to take steps to address the gaps in digital trust and security . We ' ve also seen that inclusion , accessibility and the digital divide are issues which will be heightened in a post COVID-19 scenario . This is

Almost all IT professionals who we speak to believe that the risk of data breaches is far higher for remote workers and we don ’ t disagree .

heavily on the vulnerable populations .

In the new COVID normal world , there ' s going to be pressing reasons to accelerate connectivity and digital skills for some three-to-four million people who remain totally offline , and many of these are right here in Africa .

So , there is also a more urgent need for universal service strategies and policies to combat new forms of the digital divide .

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