Author: aar

Data breaches and other types of modern, large-scale cyberattacks have been making headlines for more than a decade, but recently, it seems like organizations in the life sciences and healthcare industry have been taking on more than their fair share. As it turns out, it doesn’t just seem that way – it’s actually happening according to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, which states that 15% of these attacks hit healthcare organizations.

We don’t have to go very far back in time for a good example of one of these attacks on a healthcare or pharma organization. On June 27, 2017, Merck, one of the largest pharma companies in the world, and 2,000 other companies were hit with ransomware called Petya that infected employees’ computers across 65 countries and left a ransomware note demanding a bitcoin payment to decrypt their infected files. Weeks later, the pharma giant is still trying to get their infrastructure back on track.

So, before a company like Merck – or any company for that matter – can determine a plan of action to prevent the next cyberattack, it must consider why the attack happened in the first place. With that in mind, let’s explore a few narratives that could come into play in the process of becoming a cyber attack target.

Four Narratives that Could Explain Why

1. A decade ago, cybersecurity was all about securing the perimeter to ensure that corporate IT systems were closed to outsiders. In the past five years, however, working remotely has become more and more ubiquitous with a high percentage of employees working outside of the perimeter, accessing sensitive data through the cloud and unsecured systems, and often doing it all via a mobile device. As a result, the entire enterprise has become fundamentally more vulnerable, making it difficult to determine where the perimeter ends and the outside world begins.
2. Healthcare and life sciences companies have long been slow to innovate when it comes to digital, and this hasn’t been helped by the fact that technology is not their core business proposition. In fact, as other industries have had to adopt new business models to grow their revenues, which typically resulted in disproportionate investment into technology, healthcare and life sciences have stayed a little behind the digitization curve.
3. For many organizations, being slow to innovate is not by choice. Instead, it’s often for compliance reasons, like in a scenario where a business has to choose between meeting the latest regulatory standard and rolling out a new technology. In this case, the company may stay in business without the new software component, but not without meeting the regulatory standard. Indeed, compliance has long been a burden to the CIO agenda.
4. Finally, considering the above narrative about the ever-expanding perimeter and how the June cyberattack on Merck affected so many employees, it’s worth noting that the companies making headlines for data breaches aren’t small or even medium-sized. Instead, hackers go after the biggest and, by extension, most profitable targets – companies with the highest numbers of employees, locations, and potential entry points.

How to Plan for What’s Next

Considering the size and scope of the data breach against Merck, it’s hard not to start posing what-if questions. What if they had implemented better or more security controls sooner? What if they had run a mixture of Windows and iOS to stave off Windows-attacking viruses like WannaCry and Petya? What if they had identified the virus before it made its way across the entire enterprise?

There will always be what-ifs, but with so many possible access points for a data breach, it’s nearly impossible to ever be 100% uncompromising, especially when you’re a huge company trying to balance growth and revenue with compliance and security.

It’s not easy, but it is absolutely worth your time to not only determine a plan to improve your cybersecurity, but also create a plan for how to respond if your company falls victim to a cyber attack. The best way to get started is to assume you’re already compromised, or that you’ll be compromised tomorrow at the latest, and then find a partner who can help you. The faster you make cybersecurity a priority, the better off you’ll be.

 

Etihad Oilfield Services Ltd is an integrated upstream oil and natural gas services company in Nigeria. We offer Turnkey Drilling management contractor services for complete field development projects.

Not many businesses understand the adage that “good news travels fast and bad news travels faster.” In today’s digital and mobile era, any experience – good or bad – can travel globally in seconds. For retail brands, the market is a high-stakes game of exceeding customers’ expectations…

Not many businesses understand the adage that “good news travels fast and bad news travels faster.” In today’s digital and mobile era, any experience – good or bad – can travel globally in seconds. For retail brands, the market is a high-stakes game of exceeding customers’ expectations.

Brands that impress their customers boost retention rates and drive their revenue higher. In fact, raising customer retention two percent can produce revenue equal to a ten percent cut in costs.

Stop making customers jump through hoops

High-touch customer service programs look beyond single touch points. They focus on the end-to-end experience. That means taking a holistic view of the customer journey. Why? Because just one negative contact can taint an otherwise positive experience.

So, how do you create a world class customer experience in retail? You need to embrace these key elements:

• Deploy a flexible and scalable workforce. This ensures that customers have a good experience no matter when they interact with your brand. This is critical in the retail industry with its huge increase in traffic during the holidays. Top retailers raise their staffing by two to three times during this period.
• Create a first-call resolution rate of 90%  or higher. Imagine a customer has a technical issue with their TV. They call the retailer they bought it from. The retailer suggests calling the manufacturer directly. The manufacturer points them back to the retailer and even the cable provider.

At this point, the customer returns the product out of frustration. Your bottom line suffers and your brand takes a hit to its reputation. You can avoid all of this just during the customer’s first call.

• Implement behavior-based training: An expert workforce can get you close to a 90 percent first-call resolution rate. However, managing to a metric won’t get you beyond the goal. Breaking through requires teaching each agent the skills that “wow” customers. More important is instilling an outspoken boldness in your representatives. They need to feel rewarded for reporting broken tools, processes and policies. Fix what’s broken and you’ll drive beyond 90 percent.

Ensure customers only have good things to say

Your customers talk about your brand whether you see it or not. In fact, 87 percent of them will share positive interactions—and 95 percent will share their bad ones. In short, high-touch customer service retains and attracts new customers through word of mouth.

Making the investment in high-touch customer experience is a must. It’s vital than ever in today connected, digital world where one bad contact can go global.

 

As the retail industry turns increasingly digital, customers are now more well-informed and connected than ever before. To take on this challenge, and drive significant customer engagement, retailers need to blur the lines between the offline and…