Data breaches happen daily, many of which go undetected for months and even years. In this environment, having visibility into assets across the enterprise is paramount. This critical security need is termed “enterprise visibility” and has become a household name across the industry. The concept can take on a variety of meanings depending on the stakeholder you may be dealing with across the enterprise.

Workplace productivity is directly related to company profitability. Employers are seeking more and more ways to cut waste – including wasteful activities that eat into productivity. Many companies would immediately agree that playing video games, spending excessive time on social media and streaming videos are blatant violations of workplace acceptable use policies.

Employees know that too much work and not enough play leads to exhaustion and burnout. The World Health Organization now officially recognizes ‘occupational burnout” as a cause of mental and physical health problems in the workplace.

Level Setting on Tech Companies Let’s start by defining what a technology company is. Think hardware, software, and technology service companies who are creating a form of technology that others can purchase and utilize. Some of the biggest and most popular players in this space that may come to mind include Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Google. These companies provide pure technology to their consumers for a price. Though common, the sector is not limited to these types of companies either.

Ransomware has been a hot topic within the cyber security industry for quite some time now. It’s an often-lucrative cyber-attack method with an attractive return on investment. The motivation behind Ransomware attacks tends to be primarily financial, as cyber criminals can’t resist such easy opportunities to achieve their malicious goals. Ransomware is effective given that almost every individual or organization owns or has access to digital assets which are valuable to them.

Organizations usually focus on cyber threats which are external in origin. These include anti-malware, external firewalls, DDoS attack mitigation, external data loss prevention, and the list goes on. That's great, external cyber attacks are very common so it's vital to protect your networks from unauthorized access and malicious penetration. The internet and unauthorized physical access to your facilities will always be risks and they must be monitored and managed.

The author G.K. Chesterton noted that “there is a lot of difference between listening and hearing.” Of the four communication skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing – we learn listening first, but as time goes on many of us seem to lose interest in truly listening to what others have to say. Leaders would do well to work on listening to inspire workers and increase productivity.

If you suspect that your employees are wasting time on the job and they are not performing up to expectations, it might be time to transform the culture of your organization. A company with a toxic culture runs the risk that employees will remain disengaged and productivity will decline even further. As a leader, you have the perfect opportunity to make improvements by building a culture of support and respect and strengthening teamwork.

Financial gain is one of the most common motivations behind cyber-attacks, making the financial sector an attractive target for cyber criminals. Recently, it was reported that companies in finance lost nearly $20 billion due to cyber-attacks and breaches. Furthermore, it was reported that financial companies get attacked 2500x more than a typical business for a total of over one billion attack attempts in a single year. These attacks don’t just target financial institutions.

Investigating a once trusted employee for potential misuse, theft, or other offenses regarding company resources can be a complicated process. While we all hope to hire ethically sound employees, various factors can contribute to ending up with a bad apple in the bunch. Labeled, insider threats, these employees pose a grave risk to organizations due to the insider knowledge and often authorized access they have to critical resources.