Bernard Marr has written an excellent guide to the unstoppable tech trends for 2018 which I thought worth summarising:
He lists the following as the key trends:
- The increasing datafication of our lives
- The growth of the Internet of Things
- Exponential growth in computing power
- The rise of artificial intelligence
- Increasing automation
- 3D printing
- Changing ways in which we interact with technology
- The invention of Blockchains
- the growth of Platforms (facebook, uber, air bnb etc)
The full article can be seen here, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/9-unstoppable-technology-trends-define-our-world-2018-bernard-marr, but the thing that stands out for me is not just how fast technology is advancing, but how people, businesses and organisations are playing ‘catch-up’ in knowing what to adopt, and the implications of that.
GDPR is one example of the EU trying to bring laws up to date, but businesses are already struggling to get in line for the May 2018 deadline, and who is to say it won’t all be rendered obsolete by a new as yet unknown technology before we know it.
Linked to GDPR is security – so much information now is held on mobile devices which are taken outside of the workplace, which immediately become a potential weak link to your data and/or network. Do you need to be considering the integrity of your employees home networks if they occasionally work from home? Could a weak or default password on Alexa or another smart IoT device allow unauthorised access to the network and ultimately compromise a work device?
These innovations do not just affect technology based companies, they affect virtually every sector of the economy.
Small businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place – customers are forever demanding innovation and the latest trends, but implementing these as fast as technology moves whilst ensuring all the security implications are taken into account is challenging – and the fines that can be levied post GDPR for getting it wrong are significant.
To keep on top of things will require control; an understanding of what data you have, where it is stored and how it can be accessed (by which devices, by who, and from where). The simpler you can keep it, the easier it will be to ensure it is secure and also to react to threats and/or new opportunities.
