From ransomware and malware to the Internet of Things, midmarket IT leaders are staring down a number of security threats, often with limited resources at hand.
Robert Field - VP of Global Digital Solutions - Precipart
Field, who heads up the IT department at Precipart, a contract manufacturing company based in Farmingdale, N.Y., said that while phishing has a lot of buzz right now, it's actually malware that has him most worried.
"Malware makes me nervous because something could be sitting on my data for a long, long time. If you get hit with some sort of malware and you're down, that's the highest cost possible. We're down, our business is down, everyone's down [and] you're fired."
Field expects his spending on security to increase each year, particularly as new technologies such as augmented reality/virtual reality headsets get introduced into the design and manufacturing process, bringing with them a new rash of security implications that need to be explored.
"If Boeing has the nose cone of an airplane that doesn't open up anymore, they put AR goggles on and they put their hands into the nose cone [virtually], and they don't have to look at anything, so now we have to find a way to secure AR goggles and that data," Field said. "What if you pick up my goggles - now, are you me? How does that work? We still don't understand that security concept, so I don't think the budget for security will go down. I continue to increase my security budget every year."
