[Teisha Nolen]

The year 2020 exposed major security gaps as organizations scrambled to adapt to remote work. One of the biggest concerns was the vulnerability of home networks and personal devices. Phishing attacks surged, often disguised as COVID alerts or login pages. Ransomware hit critical sectors hard, especially healthcare and education.
At my workplace, we saw the importance of layered defenses. Ethical hackers regularly tested our systems, and employee training became essential to minimize human error. I watched our IT department deploy and roll out mobile workstations for over half of our employees in a matter of a couple of weeks. VPNs became a critical tool – allowing secure remote access while protecting internal resources from external threats. But even the VPNs had to be configured properly to avoid exposing sensitive data.
Organizations responded by expanding VPN infrastructure, enforcing multi-factor authentication, and adopting zero-trust models. Security teams had to pivot fast, integrating resilience into every layer.
2020 showed that cybersecurity isn’t just a technical issue – it’s a business imperative. Resilient systems anticipate failure and build with redundancy.