Recurring challenges like talent retention, cost reduction and improving project profitability are business as usual for AEC firms. But now the industry is also being confronted by geopolitical and economic unrest, supply chain disruption, surging cybercrime and increasingly rigorous ESG targets.

The extent and pace at which AEC firms innovate determines their competitive strength in an increasingly volatile market, driving continued IT investment across the sector. Technology has become not just a necessary cost, but an essential route to revenue and a way to unlock greater ROI, top vdi solutions are a great way to do so.

However, it’s becoming ever trickier to maintain that competitive edge. There’s

increasing reliance on data and technology across all business areas to facilitate mission critical tools, deliver client projects and support global teams. This opens firms
to extreme operational, reputational, and financial risk should even one link in the chain break. Growing data sets, continued app development and infrastructure complexity are some of the factors making the role of IT leaders more challenging than ever before.

AEC Cyber Risk – Not If, But When

It’s no longer a case of if, but when your organisation will be hit by cybercrime. With a 48% increase in cybercrime losses globally last year alone, it’s no wonder that architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms are investing more than ever in cyber security technologies, increasing their YoY spend
by 11%.

We know IT and security leaders are trying to do the right thing – pouring time, money and energy into trying to protect their organisations.

So why are threats still slipping through the gaps? Despite increased spend on defences, nearly 70% of organisations have been breached by cyber-attacks at least once in the past year, according to Forrester. As an industry, we are clearly getting a negative return on that investment.

10 Cyber Security Trends 2023

Cybercrime organisations have become a global business operating on an enterprise-level scale, often with a corporate departmental layout mirroring a technology company, with external support and customer services functions. These carefully managed corporate entities are investing billions in growth, research, and development to ensure they stay ahead of stretched cyber defences and reap huge financial rewards.

For their victims, the eye-watering ransomware demands that hit the headlines are only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to detecting, mitigating, and rectifying a breach, the true cost of an attack should also factor in the time and resources required for an organisation to recover operationally, but more significantly the daily lost revenue the business recognised during the period of attack. Whether the business decides to pay the ransom or not, substantial costs are incurred, which will include items such as digital forensics and data restoration, threat actor negotiation, IR counsel and legal costs, credit monitoring, PR, and crisis management.

• Geopolitical instability and economic stress will drive cybercrime increases.
• AI-Driven information warfare and cybercrime will increase.
• Disruptive technologies will create new opportunities and threats.
• Ransomware and Extortionware-as-a-Service will advance.
• Initial access techniques will evolve, allowing more exploitation.
• Increased business email compromise activity.
• High impact software vulnerabilities will continue to be exploited.
• Living off the land techniques will continue to increase.
• Organisations will migrate more on-premises applications into the cloud.
• Cloud-based security controls and supply chain risk.

Some Interesting Insights

• Over 70% of ransomware victims pay up.
• The true cost of an attack also includes the time and resources to detect, rectify and fully recover from a breach.
• Around half of all data breaches happen in the cloud – but almost two thirds of IT leaders believe they are not effectively securing their cloud resources.
• Supply chain vulnerabilities pose a growing risk to AEC organisations.

Our Services and Solutions

Having full end-to-end expertise makes a difference – from devices, connectivity and cloud to storage, security, and the user experience.

Creative ITC can help with this, please find below our as-a-service range of expertise.

Backup-as-a-Service

BaaS managed on-site, remotely or as a mix of both, protect your most valuable customer, product, financial and employee information.

Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service

Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service ensures full recovery of data, getting your business up-and-running within the shortest possible window.

Monitoring-as-a-Service

A comprehensive proactive monitoring solution for devices, networks, and applications.

Security Operation Centre-as-a-Service

SOCaaS is provided directly by Creatives partner, Arctic Wolf. Strengthen your security posture with leading Manage Detection & Response services.

Storage-as-a-Service

Storage shouldn’t come down to an either/or choice. Have the flexibility with STaaS to choose which data and workloads to keep on-site or to go into the cloud.

Desktop-as-a-Service

VDI solutions that can be consumed in the cloud, on premise or in a hybrid model.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Unlock the full potential of transformative technologies with a flexible approach to virtual CPU, RAM, and System Storage with IaaS.

Network-as-a-Service

Network-as-a-Service lets you bolster up your networking capabilities using SDWAN, Firewall Technologies or VPN/Point-to-Point connectivity.

Support-as-a-Service

First, Second Line and Third Line support; pick and choose support elements right for you and your business with SUPaaS.