Any business can benefit from a UCS

If you’re an SMB who thinks a unified communication system (UCS) is a luxury for large organizations, think again.

With remote work still the norm even as employees head back to the office, having the right tools for remote workers is essential for attracting and retaining talent by offering flexibility to your team, as well as maintaining competitive advantage in your industry through efficiency and productivity.

A UCS enables distributed employees to collaborate effectively by pulling together all the communications and file sharing tools they need into a single platform, including calendaring, video conferencing, voice calling, chat and email. Together, your staff can communicate, share information, and easily keep everyone in the loop through advanced project management capabilities and cloud-based storage.

The right UCS platform will work with multiple devices, too, with an emphasis on mobile device optimization to enable employees to connect from anywhere. Your chosen UCS should balance simplicity to ensure an intuitive experience for all users while also offering advanced functionality such as one-button push to join, in-meeting chat, call-in and callback, and whiteboard capabilities.

If you’re already invested in cloud-based business tools such as Microsoft Office 365, Google Docs, and popular customer relationship management (CRM) software, you can integrate them and other software with a UCS through application programming interfaces (APIs). Any UCS should readily integrate with your existing IP network or on-premises IP telephony network.

All these capabilities and integrations might suggest that adopting a UCS is an expensive, complicated proposition best left to a large organization with an in-house IT team, but because today’s UCS solutions are cloud-based, it’s feasible and relatively easy to adopt and scale up a UCS in line with the growth of your business and headcount. A cloud based UCS streamlines ongoing management, so it’s easy to add users, devices and locations and keep an eye on all of them through a centralized, holistic dashboard.

Adopting the right UCS sets your employees up for success in an era of hybrid work, no matter where they’re working, enabling them to connect and collaborate cohesively to keep your business competitive. If evaluating and deploying a UCS still seems overwhelming, you don’t have to go it alone. A managed service provider can help you select the best platform for your needs and integrate with your existing telephony and productivity apps, as well as understand how a UCS aligns with your broader business goals.

There are many ways artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning already impact cybersecurity. You can expect that trend to continue in 2024 – both as tools for data protection as well as a threat.

Balancing Cybersecurity Innovation Amid Evolving Threat Landscapes

Even as you implement AI and machine learning into your cybersecurity strategy through the adoption of tools like Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR), so are threat actors. They will continue to update and evolve their own methodologies and tools to compromise their targets by applying AI and machine learning to how they use ransomware, malware and deepfakes.

With small and medium-sized businesses just much at risk as their large enterprise counterparts, SMBs must take advantage of AI and machine learning as mush possible. AI-directed attacks are expected to rise in 2024 in the form of deepfake technologies that make phishing and impersonation more effective, as well as evolving ransomware and malware.

Deepfake social engineering techniques

Deepfake technologies that leverage AI are especially worrisome, as they can create fake content that spurs employees and organizations to work against their best interests. Hackers can use deepfakes to create massive changes with serious financial consequences, including altering stock prices.

Deepfake social engineering techniques will only improve with the use of AI, increasing the likelihood of data breaches through unauthorized access to systems and more authentic looking phishing messages that are more personalized, and hence, more effective.

Countering Cyber Threats and Harnessing Innovation in 2024

If hackers are keen on leveraging AI and machine learning to defeat your cybersecurity, you must be ready to combat them in equal measure – just as AI and machine learning will create new challenges in 2024, they can also help you bolster your cybersecurity. While regulations are being developed to foster ethical use of AI, threat actors are not likely to follow them.

AI will also affect your cyber insurance as your providers will use it to assess your resilience against cyberattacks and adjust your premium payments accordingly. AI presents an opportunity for you to improve your cybersecurity to keep those insurance costs under control.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of doom being predicted around the growing use of AI and machine learning. And while it does pose a risk to your organization and its sensitive data, you can use it to bolster your cybersecurity even as threat actors leverage AI to up the ante. A managed service provider with a focus on security can help you use AI and machine learning to protect your organization as we head into 2024.

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