SAP's Elena Kvochko: Is 2021 the Year Cybersecurity and IT Finally Converge?
SAP’s chief trust officer headlined the Interop Digital event on Thursday, bringing a hot topic to the forefront.
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INTEROP DIGITAL — Expect collaboration between cybersecurity and IT teams to become the norm. That’s the prediction from SAP’s Elena Kvochko.
Kvochko serves as chief trust officer for the business process software vendor. She headlined the Interop Digital event on Thursday, discussing cybersecurity’s changing role in IT. (Interop Digital is run by Informa Tech, the parent company of Channel Futures.)
SAP’s Elena Kvochko
Traditionally, Kvochko noted, cybersecurity and IT professionals have not worked hand in hand. That’s shifting — and, no surprise, COVID-19 is either to thank or blame. As the pandemic pushed organizations into remote work, bad actors took advantage. Ransomware and other attack vectors spread not just through networks and email, but into employees’ mobile devices. They threatened cloud applications, too.
“We definitely saw a change in the volume of attacks and types of attacks,” Kvochko said.
That activity shows no signs of letting up, and as a result, cybersecurity and IT experts must join forces. Everyone “has to prioritize cybersecurity to keep organizations running smoothly,” Kvochko said.
That has to happen now, she added.