Interview: Lindsay Brown, LogMeIn

In our annual Leaders in Technology series, we ask the experts what the year ahead holds. Today we talk security and services with LogMeIn’s Lindsay Brown.

How have Australian workplaces coped with COVID? Will things go back to normal?

This year we’ve discovered a lot of new ways of working out of necessity. First, not being able to work face-to-face has challenged the way we collaborate. Organisations were required to put substantial effort into integrating their virtual meeting solutions with technologies such as instant messaging and live document sharing to help people to work asynchronously, while balancing the ‘working from home’ lifestyles (home schooling, remote locations, disparate time zones, etc).

Second, the perimeter of the office has been redefined by employees working from their home offices. People are accessing their work applications using unsecured networks or their own devices, and this has driven organisations to implement tools to help adequately manage the identity of their employees while providing safe access to sensitive information.

Lastly, with the increased use of work on personal devices in a remote setting, organisations have implemented technologies to ensure their employees are supported at all times and from anywhere. This is especially important for government organisations as they ensure continuity to the services they provide for their constituents while keeping everyone safe.

What more can governments do to counter cyber attacks?

Based on the findings of the most recent Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) report produced by Verizon, 81% of the data breaches globally occur due to compromised or stolen credentials. This trend is consistent in Australia; the OAIC reported 67% of cyber incidents in 2020 were attributed to compromised or stolen credentials. It’s a fact, hackers aren’t hacking in, they are logging in, and password management is the Achilles heel of the cybersecurity landscape.

The Australian Government has recognised this risk and has put in place several programs to help their constituents to be educated about the multiple ways their personal data is vulnerable and can be used maliciously. The government needs to continue driving those initiatives. At an organisational level, institutions need to invest in solutions that help shift into passwordless environments. This can be achieved by integrating their exiting single sign on and multifactor authentication technologies with a password manager such as LastPass by LogMeIn.

How will IT improve operational efficiency in 2021, and who should lead the charge?

Organisational efficiently is a cross-functional effort. Leadership defines culture and culture defines performance. All the leaders within the organisations need to work together to determine the vision and policies in which the employees will operate going forward (remote working, hybrid or full time in the office). From that point of view, leaders in IT need to take the necessary steps to build or re-build the ecosystem with hardware and software to enable people do their best work.

What’s on your wish list from government, industry and innovators?

This year we’ve seen organisations embracing digital transformation like never before; however, there is an opportunity for governments to increase access to better self-service solutions so that constituents get instant access to solutions tailored to their particular needs. This is particularly important during uncertain times when people are looking for answers and the only place they can find them is by going online. This can be done by implementing AI-powered virtual assistants, chat bots and content repositories that work as an extension of customer experience and support teams.

Lindsay Brown has over 20 years of sales and executive management experience, with a track record in growing and scaling both emerging and established multinational technology companies. He joined LogMeIn in February 2017 through the Citrix GetGo acquisition, having joined Citrix in January 2014 where he led the business to have the fastest growing region globally.