More and more IT, e-commerce, and security conversations seem to mention blockchain. It’s the latest buzzword floating around IT water coolers. It's even been the biggest buzz around our office! So, what is blockchain? 

Back in March, the FTC’s acting chairman spoke at NASDAQ at an event hosted by the National Cyber Security Alliance. What she had to share was alarming. Small and mid-size businesses are becoming more susceptible to data breach incidents. Maureen Ohlhausen said, “we are seeing a huge amount of data breaches that target small businesses, but they don’t have the resources to withstand the impact.”

More and more organizations are moving into the cloud, in fact, according to a study by Cisco, cloud adoption has more than doubled in the past 2 years. Yet there are broad implications for pushing company data beyond a traditional firewall.

Software makes businesses work. Period. But knowing what software makes sense and understanding how to manage it can be a challenge. It is a sophisticated tool and is almost always copyrighted. While open source software can make sense in some very limited scenarios, most often companies need to license software. Managing those licenses and adhering to the installation and use according to the license can be complicated and the penalties for mismanagement can be expensive.

We have all seen the list of worst passwords – “123456” and “password” always seem to vie for the top spot. But the bottom line is that passwords are one of the weakest links in the protection of business data.  That’s why they are slowly being abandoned, but if not passwords, then what?