The new normal is not new, not normal – but it’s here right now

new normal
Image by mentalmind | Bigstockphoto

The new normal used to be a phrase CEOs would quote or even ‘air-quote’ when they wanted us to think of a bright new dawn after the pandemic had been crushed.

Sadly, the pandemic has not been crushed, there is no tantalising dawn glow, and the fact is that this is just normal.

And we need to get on with things.

CB Insights measures how often CEOs and other execs say various things during earnings calls. In recent weeks, the occurrence of ‘new normal’ in these calls has fallen off dramatically. So too has the curled fingers of the air quote. So too are mentions of ‘unprecedented’ as in ‘unprecedented times.’

The new normal, sorry normal normal is not normal. And one of the things that has changed out of all recognition is the technology landscape.

Digital transformation has been given a huge boost. Agility has been thrust upon us as we learn to work from, well, wherever we are.

And security professionals are at war.

Almost every day and certainly every week, there is a news story about a cyberattack. Ransomware is everywhere and costing billions of dollars, and now we hear of potentially the most serious attack in a decade. And everyone is exhausted.

This latest attack is focused on a library rather than just software. An old library could be used and accessed by parts of an organisation that are not up to date and therefore difficult to find. It also means that patches are not as effective as the attack against software itself.

The increase in sophistication of cyberattacks has been phenomenal and far ahead of general technology advances. Russia and others have all but given up disguising their identity and making little secret that they are spying on everyone they can and able to take out critical infrastructure if they want. They can also pretend to be Chinese – and vice versa.

Kamala Harris has said she would not use Bluetooth earphones. And she is right.

The new normal is here, and it is a more dangerous normal than before. But we are learning and evolving, and we will soon find this normal to be, well, normal.

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