Unplugged and Uninterrupted: What’s Driving Networking Today
Offices. Hospitals. Factories. Hotels. Universities. Sports arenas. In my job, I talk to the people around the world who run technology for all of these types of operations. They tell me that more wireless devices than ever are joining their networks, and that if they have no Wi-Fi, they have no business. Without a network that’s up 24/7, a hospital’s critical medical device might not function. A robot in a warehouse won’t be able to receive commands and a critical process will grind to a halt. A point of sale tablet in a stadium won’t be able to process a fan’s purchase, and perishable demand will be lost.
The network, in short, is critical infrastructure. And the kind of network we’re relying on is changing. In the past, for devices that needed constant connectivity, we’d wire them to our core. Today, our critical devices are just as likely to be wireless: the cart with medical equipment, the roving inventory-picker robot, the handheld ticket scanner. These devices can no longer connect using “best effort” wireless as they might have in the past. The wireless network has to be as rock-solid as wired. It has to provide uninterrupted and unplugged access for users and devices.
Businesses need their IT professionals to understand these issues today, as well as challenges they will be facing in the near future. Having planners who see into the future is one key way businesses stay agile and competitive. So when I speak with IT professionals we often discuss the need to plan for a few key trends.
It’s not just that every employee of a business has a device (or two) that they connect to our networks. Today, every single person visiting a business comes with several devices, and the number of devices per person (phone, watch, headphones) continues to grow.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everything today is getting connected. From light bulbs to medical diagnostic equipment, there is hardly a single new piece of infrastructure that is not connected today, or that won’t be tomorrow. IT staffs are not getting larger to match this growth. For IT to provide uninterrupted connectivity to all these devices, simplicity is the key to scaling up.
As much as businesses are eager to adopt the latest technology in their business, the networks must be reliable and safe – all the time, no matter the situation. And the more connections we open up, the more exposure a network has. The major security threats today are also different from what we were protecting from just a few years ago. Today, data theft isn’t the only challenge. We need to protecting networks and devices from outright sabotage. Ransomware is now used to take down businesses. The impact can be brutal. The NotPetya attack cost businesses over $10 billion in 2017, and some of the hardest-hit companies were completely compromised in under four minutes.
Additionally, the bulk of incremental devices landing on the network are unmanaged, not laptops or phones that are managed by IT. This means classical pieces of the security kill chain – endpoint tools such as antivirus software, MDM (Mobile Device Management), and EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) – don’t come into play. The increase in device and OS diversity can also lead to a dramatic rise in alerts from legacy network security tools, making them essentially ineffective for SecOps departments already suffering from alert fatigue. Finally, unmanaged devices can also be weaponized by attackers; they’re often highly vulnerable to botnets, like Mirai, which continue to rapidly evolve.
The way we interact with technology is evolving, too. Since computing first became part of business, we have moved from batch processing, to command lines, to interactive experiences on our computers and handheld devices. We are now moving into the era of truly immersive computing, in which users will expect real-time and high definition imagery as part of the interface.
