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OPINION
2032 looks back at 2022
If you’re not taking a proactive approach to your firm’s cybersecurity, this could be the year you decide to go out of business without realizing it.
L et’s time travel for a bit. Assume for a while that time travel is commercially available. Now let’s jump ahead and see what the roadkill in the next 10 years will be in the AEC industry.
As we look back and compare firms that are still in business now (2032) versus back then (2022), we will find that most of the decisions that caused those firms to go out of business were not made in grand fashion. Few will be able to point to a seminal moment and say, “If they had just chosen ‘a’ instead of ‘b,’ they would still be around.” The failures we see in 2032 are not the result of a singular bad decision. Looking back, we will find that most of the failures were the result of a mindset rooted five to eight years prior to 2022. 2022 was a year where most businesses in the Midwest were still trying to live with their “doors unlocked” because “that’s just how we do business.” It was a year when most leaders walked around with an intentional de-emphasis on any type of cybersecurity threat. It was a year when IT spend was still viewed
as an expense and not an investment. It was a year when most leaders or founders of any given firm were convinced they had a shield around them that protected them from cyber criminals because “they don’t even know we exist.” Boy were they wrong. Looking back, we see that 2022 was the year things changed. It was the year that business leaders and firm owners learned at least three important lessons the hard way: 1. Being unknown or small does not equal safe. Most businesses that went out of business between 2022 and 2032 did so as the result of the flawed thinking that being unknown provided
Mark Hodges
See MARK HODGES, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER SEPTEMBER 12, 2022, ISSUE 1456
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