From cybersecurity and big data to cloud computing, IT Brew covers the latest trends shaping business tech in our 4x weekly newsletter, virtual events with industry experts, and digital guides.

IT Brew

Eoin Higgins

itbrew.com

IT workers laid off from big tech firms have a new suitor—the auto industry

‘The demand for technology workers is still outpacing the supply, even though more supply is being pumped into the system,’ says one expert.

Billy Hurley

Tech CEOs have brighter outlook than pessimistic peers

Despite global uncertainties, some tech CEOs know they’re so money.

Speed up software upgrades—with a slow build of momentum

A key to upgrading outdated software: Get the conversation going.

a large, dimly lit office with all empty desks except one with a male worker sitting in his chair looking at his computer screen

Work

Brianna Monsanto

It’s a day every IT pro dreads: hearing about 

 within your company, then being summoned into an HR manager’s office and being dismissed.

The tech industry is going through a purge. Earlier this week, IBM 

 plans to layoff a portion of its workforce. Meanwhile, Amazon 

 of 600 workers from its AI unit last month. After a layoff comes the uncomfortable question: “What’s next?” For most, it’s dusting yourself off and looking for a new opportunity. According to Overture Partners CRO Mark Aiello, that can be a grueling process.

“Definitely no one ever went to bed on Sunday night saying, ‘Hey, I get to look for a new job. Tomorrow is going to be great!’” Aiello said.

 IT Brew caught up with Diana Huang, VP of technology staffing agency Prosum’s Southern California market, to learn how IT pros can make their job search less cumbersome, as well as proper résumé etiquette. Huang said one of the most important things an IT pro can do to improve their résumé

is to demonstrate their accomplishments through numbers or other measurable metrics.

“It could be ‘Reduced cloud spend by 15% through automation,’ or ‘Improved deployment frequency from weekly to daily,’” Huang said. “It’s adding numbers and specifics and showing your impact.”

She added that professionals should make sure résumé details match what’s on their LinkedIn profile. A good résumé is also as concise as possible.

“Don’t write a novel. No one’s going to read 15 pages,” Huang said. “Let’s try to really keep it short. If you’re more junior, five years [or] under, keep it [to] one page and try to keep it really concise.”

Applicants are also working against applicant tracking systems, software used by hiring managers to filter and rank résumés by specified keywords or qualifications, according to Aiello, who added these “magic” algorithms can complicate things for job-seekers.

“It’s more secret than anything the CIA does that they don’t explain, and you have to hope that you have the right keywords and the right weighting and all of that,” he said.

Because of this, Aiello advises that applicants avoid using LinkedIn’s Easy Apply function and similar tools, and instead take time tailoring résumés to feature skills mentioned in the job descriptions of the desired role.

“[Overusing Easy Apply] should mean ‘I like to be ghosted’…because that’s basically what’s going to happen to you,” Aiello said. He added that those who do feel inclined to use the function should do additional research and reach out to hiring managers separately.

 Networking is also important when professionals are seeking a new opportunity, Aiello added. He said professionals seeking a new role should be specific when discussing their ideal role with their industry connections.

“Don’t just say, ‘I’m looking for a job.’ Help them think exactly of what it is that you do in terms that they can understand,” he said. Emailing or texting similar job postings can help to illustrate what an IT pro is looking for.

Huang suggests tech professionals build strong connections with a handful of local recruiters who specialize in IT.

“If you’re able to have those strong relationships, they will give you access to opportunities that will give you a better chance, rather than just submitting an application and a lot of times turning into a black hole,” she said.

She also advised professionals to announce that they are seeking work on LinkedIn and similar platforms.

“I bet you a lot of people who would see that and have worked with you would be like, ‘Oh, I’m so sad to hear that, but I know of so and so who might be looking. Let me make that connection,’” Huang said. “So, don’t be afraid to broadcast that.”

Aiello said it is important for professionals to remember to maintain contact with networked connections, even after they land a new job.

“If the only time you hear from your friend is when you need a ride to the airport or you need help moving after a while, they’re no longer going to be your friend,” he said.

Huang added that job-seekers should let recruiters know if they lose interest in a position or leave the candidate pool altogether. “If you ghost, then you will be blacklisted out of their system, and they will not present you again to their clients.”

Graphic of a laid-off worker leaving their desk.

What to do when you’re hit by mass layoffs

One tech staffing agency VP says to keep résumés short and accurate.

If you’re a US worker, it’s possibly the most 

Corporate America is actively slimming down its workforce, leaving many IT pros wondering how they can prepare for layoffs.

 it planned to cut its workforce by 14,000 roles. Other tech companies that have pared back workers over the past several months include Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Salesforce, Dropbox, 

Wolfgang Bauriedel, a senior partner at organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, told IT Brew that employees are anxious about their job security—and rightfully so, as investors continue to assess companies’ ability to integrate AI and debloat their businesses.

“When I talk to CEOs in the sectors, they have strong mandates to reduce the overall workforce,” Bauriedel said, recalling a conversation with one life sciences company CEO who said they planned to downsize their 55,000-strong organization by 35,000 positions in the next 3–5 years.

 Robert Half Senior Regional Director Thomas Vick said IT professionals should remember that, despite the layoff news, a lot of IT positions are still in high demand.

“I know some of these headlines can be scary for IT professionals, but the truth is, it is still a good job market when it comes to IT-related positions,” Vick said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 

 in August that overall employment in computer and IT professions will grow faster than all other occupations between 2024 and 2034.

While BLS data forecasts a positive outlook for IT professionals, there are still actions they may take if they wish to prepare for the unexpected. Bauriedel said your typical IT pro can start by remaining open to using AI in their role to be more productive, along with keeping their skillset up-to-date.

“We see a lot of anxiety from people...they say, ‘Oh, AI is bad. It’s going to be bad for me. I don’t even want to engage in it,’” Bauriedel said. “But putting the head in the sand around it is a almost definitive way to jeopardize yourself in a role.”

Bauriedel added that now is a good time for employees to up their networking game and to consider diversifying their income by embracing side hustles.

“Extrapolate six to 12 months in the future,” Bauriedel said. “If [a layoff] happens, what do I need to do now in order to be ready not to have too big [an] impact on my income streams?”

 Diana Huang, VP of technology staffing agency Prosum’s Southern California market, said it’s important for remaining workers, especially 

, at companies that have announced layoffs to showcase their contributions within the company.

“Make sure that you’re meeting with your manager and giving them updates on the contributions that you’ve made,” Huang said. She added that employees can volunteer to take on new projects if they have the capacity to do so.

“It’s a really great opportunity to stand up and show up as a leader,” she said.

Employees may be wondering if now is still a good time to look for new opportunities, or if they should stay put and join the 

 trend. Huang said it’s okay for employees to seek out a new job amid the uncertainty, while advising them to be strategic.

“If you’re my friend, I would tell you, ‘Keep your job while you’re looking for a new one,’” Huang said. “Don’t quit because we are finding that [for] extremely qualified professionals, it’s taking much longer for them to find their next role.”

How IT pros can remain one step ahead of tech layoffs

One professional tells IT Brew that tech jobs are still in high demand despite ongoing corporate layoffs.

New data from DNSFilter shows that cybercriminals are stooping to a new low: targeting job seekers.

The cybersecurity company found 8,724 malicious domains containing the word “jobs,” with the overwhelming majority (86%) newly registered or observed. Meanwhile, 1,161 malicious domains contained the word “careers.”

Gregg Jones, an intelligence analyst lead at DNSFilter, told IT Brew that while it isn’t new for cybercriminals to target job seekers, the problem has been amplified by “current world conditions” that make those on the hunt for employment especially vulnerable to scams. While the US unemployment rate stood at 4.3% in August—the most recent published figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) due to the 

—job hiring has continued to falter. According to the BLS, US employers added 22,000 jobs in August, a sharp decline from 142,000 in the same period last year.

“​​The economy is not so great…people are struggling to find jobs, some people are struggling to keep jobs, and it’s that constant ebb and flow of ‘where’s the good sheep for the wolf to go attack?’” Jones said.

 Job seekers shouldn’t take the interest from cybercriminals personally, as malicious actors have placed targets on the backs of hiring managers, as well. In May, Arctic Wolf Labs released 

 about a spearphishing campaign hurled by threat group Venom Spider at hiring managers, with threat actors using résumés laced with malware when applying for jobs. Recruiters also have been grappling with the growing 

 scheme, which has grown in sophistication thanks to deepfake technology.

 DNSFilter suggests job seekers double-check domain names and stay away from links with “excessive hyphens or strange extensions.” Jones added that if a job offer looks too good to be true, it probably is, and said individuals can always reach out to hiring managers to verify recruitment notifications: “No one should ever chastise you for being extra careful.”

Cybercriminals have their eyes on job seekers

Job seekers can always double-check the validity of extended job offers with hiring managers, says DNSFilter Intelligence Analyst Lead Gregg Jones.

For job huggers—people who cling to their current role even if they aren’t fully happy in that position—the answer is the former. However, job hugging is a little more nuanced than it might seem, and a little more risky for cyber pros.

 from job search platform Monster, based on a survey of 1,004 US employees, found that 48% of workers are considered job huggers. Thomas Vick, a senior regional director at management consulting company Robert Half, told IT Brew the behavior is driven by economic uncertainty, with employees 

“If you had the Great Resignation on one end of the spectrum, now we’re operating on the other end where people are a lot more cautious,” Vick said.

What does that have to do with cybersecurity?

 Job huggers may seem like an obvious issue for HR professionals and managers who want more 

 out of their teams, but some cybersecurity professionals believe the growing trend may also lead to a rise in 

. Ivanti CSO Daniel Spicer told IT Brew a disengaged employee does the “bare minimum” at their job…and for many, that doesn’t include cybersecurity best practices.

“They’re more likely to fall for a phishing email,” Spicer said. “They’re more likely to consider or accept an offer to share credentials or access to a third-party for ransomware.”

Other risky behaviors from unenthusiastic employees include being less likely to report security issues right away or paying less attention to software patches, according to Spicer.

“The weakest part of any security program is still people, and disengaged people are just that much weaker of the link,” he said.

Rajan Koo, CTO of insider risk management company DTEX, said that, when interviewed after an incident, malicious insiders often felt professionally stagnant or disengaged.

“Just because somebody is disgruntled, just because they’re stuck in their job and they’re not moving to another job, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a malicious insider,” Koo said. “But it is often a precursor for those that do become malicious insiders.”

, when employees and employers have a “positive mutual reliance” on one another, as especially relevant in the job-hugging era.

“They’re not happy in their current job and a lot of the time, that disgruntlement increases and that loyalty towards the company decreases and…it can be a recipe and a precursor for a range of things, whether that be non-malicious or malicious types of insiders,” said Koo.

Vick told IT Brew that job huggers can be hard to identify “if you’re not having regular communication as to what the career goals of that individual are” or what they want to learn.

What should a cybersecurity expert do if they suspect job huggers are present in their workforce? Spicer told IT Brew they could start by looking at employee engagement surveys within their organization, something he pays a lot of attention to. An IT Brew poll of 201 readers found that over one-third (35%) of professionals use engagement surveys in some capacity to gauge insider threats within their organization. The remaining two-thirds (65%) said they either don’t review or care for these workplace surveys or don’t use them to determine potential insider threats.

“Obviously, any good engagement survey doesn’t out an individual, but if I see a weakness in a particular department…that’s something that I need to have a conversation with my peers,” he said.

Koo added that when organizations detect a disengaged employee, that doesn’t automatically mean they should give them the boot. Instead, he suggests that companies spend time reengaging that employee.

“That’s the right time to be even more loyal to that individual, especially if they’re somebody who you feel is doing their job.”

Laptop with a manager messaging an employee "how are you feeling?" with a cursor hovering over a happy emoji and sad emoji

‘Job huggers’ are a new cybersecurity problem

One CSO says disengaged employees are more likely to fall for phishing emails and report security issues too late.

For years, executives have joked-not-joked about wanting to clone their best employees.

 could make those cloning dreams a reality…sorta. With workforces transitioning to a mix of employees and their virtual twins, there’s more pressure than ever to ensure that everyone inside the organization—both human and digital—remains on task.

So, what exactly is a digital twin of an employee? It depends on who you ask. In an 

, Gartner defined it as “a model that enterprises build to understand how real employees will respond or behave in a given context.”

“The [digital twin of employees] is an emerging way to use data, models, and simulations in support of productivity, performance, experience, and well-being goals,” Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Helen Poitevin wrote.

Ryan Hamze, director at technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group, said digital twins in the manufacturing industry refer to digital replicas of an employee’s workflow.

“You’re looking at how it is simply actually doing things, and through there you can find bottlenecks,” Hamze said. “You can find the inefficiencies of how they do things [and] the bureaucracy humans have to go through to get approval sometimes.”

Digital twins of employees may also mean an AI persona of an employee that is capable of communicating with others. CJ Meadows, head of innovation for Asia at the SP Jain School of Global Management, told IT Brew she digitally twinned herself in this manner using enterprise AI persona company Personal AI, and sees several use cases for this deployment.

“In future, we’re going to see more and more digital twins on the org chart. So, our organizations are going to be mixed,” Meadows said. “There’s going to be some humans in there and some technology people in there as well.”

, digital twins of employees can be a valuable investment for companies. Hamze, for instance, said organizations can use these digital simulations for upskilling their workforce by showcasing the exact process new employees need to learn.

“If you replicate that exact process, especially with technical processes, more physical ones, it would be easy to train people for the future,” he said.

Gartner said digital twins of employees can also be beneficial in dangerous work environments, as well as for productivity gains in machine-heavy settings.

Meadows outlined one use case for her digital twin in her professional life: making herself available to answer questions for MBA students around the clock. She believes digital twins could likewise free up time for employees to tend to significant tasks.

“You know how you answer the same damn question for 50 people? Okay, how about we have your digital twin do that and you spend time doing what we actually need a human to do, and which would be hopefully more meaningful work for you,” Meadows said.

 Digital twins of employees can come with their own baggage. Hamze, for instance, said the replicas could stir up negative feelings among employees if organizations skimp on communicating their purpose and fail to build trust on the idea.

“Always understand that monitoring employees is always met with resistance because of surveillance issues and fear of being replaced,” Hamze said.

The Gartner report also notes that privacy regulation and labor laws can impact how organizations are able to collect data on employees for digital twin purposes, and that off-the-shelf solutions are rarely available.

In its report, Gartner said digital twins of employees are still in a nascent phase. However, Hamze said organizations looking to expand their workforce with these virtual employees can do so by clarifying what their purpose will be.

“You have to understand your scope of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what’s the highest value output you need,” Hamze said. He added organizations need a solid strategy for how the data leveraged by their digital twins will be collected.

“Is it coming from systems? Is it coming from cameras, monitoring the employee and AI analyzing those steps?” Hamze said. “Is it coming from data entry that you’re putting in?”

As for AI persona digital twins, Meadows said organizations may choose to treat digital twins of employees as “personal assistants” who can take on work that could be automated. Meadows said she keeps her own digital twin in check by making adjustments on the backend of it as needed.

“People have come back to me and told me things, and then with that feedback, I’ve gone in to make adjustments and corrections and so forth,” Meadows said.

A man in a suit stands on a platform across from an avatar.

What to expect when you’re expecting digital twins 

Digital twins of employees can help organizations reap productivity gains and useful for unsafe work environments.

Where were you at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic?

Some folks may recall spending 2020 making sourdough bread or DIY dalgona coffee. Others might still cringe when they remember how they always forgot to unmute when speaking on endless Zoom calls.

For IT professionals, the pandemic presented some once-in-a-lifetime challenges. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of 

 in the country tripled, from 9 million people to more than 27 million, according to 

. The wave of remote work threw many IT professionals into the Wild West, forcing them to fight off pesky Zoom bombers, rescue remote colleagues from forgotten passwords and outdated apps, and act as cybersecurity sheriff amidst a swarm of scammers trying to take advantage of remote work and health anxiety.

IT Brew caught up with several IT professionals to understand how they dealt with all these issues (and more!) during the early days of the pandemic.

Between March 1 and May 31, 2020, 42 US states and territories issued stay-at-home orders, 

. Jesse Wolcott, who was an IT manager at hotel and casino entertainment company Caesars Entertainment during the pandemic’s early stages, told IT Brew he found out the Horseshoe Casino Baltimore would be closing just after he returned from a trip to Japan.

“We’re closing the casino…which is words that don’t go together,” Wolcott, now an assistant director of IT at Royal Farms, said.

The impromptu halt on the world came with a few benefits. For the next eight weeks, Wolcott walked through an empty casino, giving him the opportunity to tend to things he previously didn’t have the time to do.

“I’m walking around to my server room, blowing stuff out with compressed air, and taking the trash out, and cleaning up my server rooms,” Wolcott said. “And I’m like, ‘This is great. I’m finally getting all these things done.’”

For Wolcott, assisting casino employees in a remote work environment wasn’t “too tragic of a transition,” given the fact that employees who needed to do remote work had already done so to some extent in the past and already had equipment. However, that task was top of mind for many IT workers whose colleagues weren’t familiar with working from their couches. Pedro Mendez, director of IT at dairy product manufacturer Tropical Cheese Industries during the pandemic, said one of the challenging parts of this adjustment was helping his colleagues learn new ways of using technology.

“Not too many people realize how technology plays such an important part [in] how our company operates or runs,” Mendez said. “Not too many people paid too much attention to that until that time.”

Mendez’s team of three supported roughly 350 employees, 200 of whom owned at least a couple of different work devices. Employees were sent home with computers that had TeamViewer installed in the event that they needed IT support, which Mendez said grew tenfold. In addition to the challenge of troubleshooting problems remotely, employees had to deal with additional variables such as poor internet connectivity.

“We had a very tight shift. We were always on call,” Mendez, now a director of IT at bedding manufacturer Pegasus Home Fashions, said, adding that he is very proud of what his team was able to accomplish.

When it came to IT/OT operations involving machinery, Mendez said the company and his team took precautions that would help employees do their jobs while remaining safe: “We started implementing gloves or trying to minimize the amount a computer will need to be shared by multiple people, things like that.” Tropical Cheese was able to operate for the entire pandemic, excluding one week when a few employees were sick.

David Torgerson, VP of technology and security at Lucid Software, which builds software products for visual brainstorming and diagramming, said the hypothetical scenario of Lucid employees needing to work remotely had always been discussed within the company. However, that hypothetical suddenly became real when Lucid’s CEO told Torgerson that the company’s employees would be sent home to work remotely…in the next 20 minutes.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re ready. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” said Torgerson, who was a senior director of DevOps at the time. “And then I ran to my team, saying, ‘Are we going to be fine? If not, we have to make it fine.’”

Torgerson said the transition from in-person to remote at Lucid was smooth: Shifting the company from a free version of Zoom to the premium one was one of the biggest changes. However, fulfilling employees’ desire for connection proved a challenge.

The issue led Torgerson to leverage his technical role to foster more connections among the company’s workforce. In addition to leading an initiative that taught employees how to be “successful” while working remotely (tips involved taking showers as often as one would when commuting to the office), he helped his organization experiment with ways they could use their current application stack for virtual social events.

“We set up a rotation that was an opt-in of just connecting people randomly together, different departments, different teams, no agenda,” Torgerson said. “We just gave people time to just talk.”

“That intentional ability to help people feel recognized, feel seen, feel heard has made a huge difference,” Torgerson added.

Social distancing and social engineering, too.

 As employees juggled work and their personal lives from the comfort of their homes, malicious actors tried to take advantage of organizations as they navigated through unprecedented territory. Stratascale Field CISO Casey Corcoran said the pandemic accelerated the adoption of 

 policies to enable remote work during a time when endpoint detection and response was “scarce.”

Before 2020, Corcoran continued, organizations had mostly relied on resources like virus scanners. However, those tools weren’t as useful with workers falling back on their own PCs and phones.

“Your home computer may or may not have had any of that on it,” Corcoran said. “There was no way to understand what that machine had been exposed to [or] who was even using that machine.”

 was another problem for companies as employees got creative with tools and services to help them with the remote-work version of day-to-day tasks and communications. For example, many employees began using their personal Dropbox to exchange important documents.

“People were just doing it,” Corcoran said. “They just set up a Dropbox…and then they put a corporate document up there and then send a link to somebody with very little visibility oversight on how that was being secured.”

Threat actors took advantage of these hiccups. There was a 78% increase in the number of ransomware attacks executed in March 2021 compared to the same period a year prior, when the pandemic was just beginning, according to BlackFog’s 

 blog. The new standard of remote work also allowed for the rise of 

While the attack surface widened for a number of organizations, there were still some bright spots for the industry overall. Paul Bingham, SVP and executive dean of Western Governors University’s School of Information Technology, said the pandemic really outlined the importance of cybersecurity for both organizations and users.

“Everybody was now more cognizant of it, because they didn’t want some random dude showing up on their Zoom meeting or whatever,” Bingham said, referring to the advent of “

He added that the pandemic encouraged prospective cybersecurity professionals to clearly see the value of the 

Covid-19 also reshaped how some IT professionals lead in their roles. Wolcott, for instance, said the pandemic heightened his 

 for his team “up to 100” after watching some of his colleagues fall ill.

“You have this pit in your stomach of: What’s going to happen?” Wolcott said. “And it’s not because I’m going to have to rehire. It’s not because I have a gap at work. It’s because this is a person who I spend a lot of time with and I care about.”

Mendez said the pandemic taught him that everyone is capable of learning how to work remotely. He also feels more confident about helping his current organization navigate another catastrophe.

“Most of the IT professionals that have gone through the pandemic, I’m pretty sure we all know what to do better, or how to do it better, because of both the experiences that we had and [because] technology nowadays is so much more reliable.”

An IT professional at their computer station

What it was like to be working in IT during the Covid-19 pandemic

“I ran to my team, saying, ‘Are we going to be fine? If not, we have to make it fine,’” one professional recalls.

Like the agent of a one-hit wonder pop star, many employers around the nation are pushing their employees to make a comeback…except this one is back to the office.

The big return-to-office (RTO) push appears here to stay for an increasing number of employers. According to a 

 querying 849 US managers in January, 27% of companies expect to enforce a five-day in-office workweek by the end of 2025.

But this trend requires more than just free food and other perks to coax employees into making a return.

Ivanti CSO Daniel Spicer told IT Brew that IT professionals have a key role to play in ensuring a good employee experience in a company’s RTO strategy. He said friction in the employee experience post-return can lead to employees using 

“You actually end up with more security threats, from my vantage point, when there isn’t a good employee experience because then they’re trying to figure out, ‘How do I get my job done in the face of all these challenges?’” Spicer said. “And that normally involves pulling in a bunch of other tools or using technology that isn’t approved by the company.”

Aaron Warner, founder and CEO of cybersecurity consulting firm ProCircular, said that IT professionals expecting an increase in office attendance from once remote and hybrid employees may find that returning devices have 

, unpatched software, or are out of date. He suggested that the transition is a good time to review the standard build or the expected configuration for company devices.

“Get a good, clean image for every workstation you want in your company, and start with the computers that are coming back,” Warner said, adding that it may be a good time to invest in 

Warner suggested that IT professionals should also consider revamping core policies around mobile device management, acceptable use, and privacy.

“If your policy document reads like stereo instructions, it’s probably a good time to rewrite that thing so that somebody knows that it’s important and it’s a good place to set expectations or reset expectations,” Warner said.

He added that there is value in communicating to employees their role in protecting their company from threats.

“From a security perspective, the most valuable insights you will get into your own cybersecurity come from those employees,” Warner said. “So, the better you’re able to build trust across that environment, the more you’re going to know about what’s happening inside of that environment.”

Some IT professionals currently going through the RTO transition said things may be a little different than before. Cory Rice, VP of IT at KnowBe4, said his company has reintroduced a hybrid and full-time work model for some of its employees. These days, Rice spends his time making sure employees have headsets to address noise complaints and dealing with forgotten or lost equipment.

“Now you’re back to people bringing things back and forth,” Rice said. “So, 10 people forget their chargers a day, 10 people forget their headsets a day, people just forget their computers and leave those at home.”

He said the shift back to in-person work has come with some perks, however, such as better help desk etiquette.

“Everybody got used to putting in tickets,” Rice said. “So, even when they’re in the office, rather than walk down and say, ‘I want to bother the help desk,’ they log a ticket, which has actually been a really nice change that happened.”

Disagreement over remote work return to office