Another year in the rearview mirror. You raise a glass and toast your organization’s many accomplishments. You met or exceeded your revenue goals, maybe, or you successfully completed three projects and put four more on the books for 2016. You are blowing and going and the world is your oyster. Take a big sip of that success. You’ve earned it. Take another for growing your business and your staff in parallel. Oh, the hint of fruit in that bubbly is very nice. Take another for the solid performance of your IT staff, keeping your network and data at the fingertips of the heroes but safe from the sticky fingers of the bad guys. At least as far as you know.

And that’s when the reality sets in, the fear that you’re not doing enough to protect a vital asset, a concern amplified by almost daily revelations of significant breaches at firms with far more to lose than yours and, therefore, far more protection in place to avoid such crises. Next thing you know the room is spinning and a dull ache begins to throb somewhere between your left eye and your right ear. The cybersecurity hangover.

New Year’s Resolution

Face the new year with the goal of drinking less from the cup of heady certainty and more from the golden chalice of expert preparedness. ICS is like the Holy Grail of cybersecurity, the answer sought by Indiana Jones and Monty Python and IT Professionals just like you.

If you’re suffering from a cybersecurity hangover, leave the aspirin in the medicine cabinet next to the Band-Aids and pick up the phone instead. If you don’t, you’re almost certain to need something stronger. Top shelf, behind the Old Spice.