How has the IT Industry changed after the COVID-19 hit in 2020?
The IT Industry is without a doubt a huge part of people’s both professional and private lives. Economies, jobs, and personal lives are becoming more digital, more connected, and more automated. The information technology industry, consists of companies that produce software and hardware, or internet or security related services, among others, as the illustration shows below.
Exponential growth in 2020
This sector has been a witness of waves of innovation over time, powering the technology growth. This growth has not stopped, rather accelerated especially in recent years. Since the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, the world has been forced to come up with ways to adapt to the lockdown and social distancing in order to cope with the crisis.
Here we see the effects of COVID-19 on the IT sector. It is one of the few industries that has not slowed down, rather picked up the pace to accommodate the sudden demand for digitalization, as the majority of businesses and schools have shifted to digital-only.
Here are a few examples of the major changes and benefits the IT industry has brought to the table.
Education & digitalization
Education is one of the domains in which there was a dramatic shift. Since the beginning of the lockdown, schools, colleges, and universities around the world have shifted their classes to video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. Along with these, educational platforms like edX and Coursera have also seen an increase in enrollments.
Some institutions are now choosing to stick to the online mode for the entire academic year, with the exception of exams which require physical presence. However, in some institutions even exam-taking has become possible online with the help of cameras.
“Need for Speed” or 5G
Due to COVID-19, there is an increase in streaming, online shopping and need for socializing. This has led to consumers needing a reliable and quick way to virtually communicate on both a personal and professional level. That is why we need now more than ever, the 5th generation (5G) technology. The following is a chart listing all features of the 5G technology.
- More Great speed (enough to download a motion picture in a couple of moments seconds)
- More prominent capacity (1,000 times limit of 4G)
- Decreased Latency (stop delays)
- Lower battery utilization
- Give continuous and steady network.
This developing technology will provide consumers with several benefits, including connection speeds that are fast, more reliable connections, smoother streaming, and video calling with less buffering. This has become the top priority for many organizations due to the pandemic. While a lot of work still needs to be done, we will definitely be seeing 5G reaching more people in more places. Once it does, the opportunities that come from 5G will be global in scale.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the speeds between the already existing 3G & 4G, and the still developing technology of 5G.
Exploitation of Crisis
Sadly, there are negative side effects that accompanied digitalization. Since the surge in the use of digital technologies, online shopping, online payment, etc. We are now witnessing a rise in online fraud, scams, and security issues. Online fraud happens all the time, but the increase is driving people to generate income through online fraud.
There’s also another method of fraud that is gaining popularity as well as victims, and that is job scams. The scammers are endlessly creative, so there are many types of job scams. For example, job scams posted on social media. This is the newest venue for job scams, and no social network is immune or perfectly safe. Be cautious of jobs and recruiters you find on social media. Fake Facebook pages exist with many “opportunities” shared and promoted. Fake LinkedIn Profiles are created, and they are used to post “opportunities” in LinkedIn Groups. Of course, sometimes real LinkedIn Profiles share fake jobs, too.
That is why it is anticipated that security innovations will rise in order to combat this increase and develop some form of online safety.
What is the future of IT?
What is the future though? The need for technology and digitalization has been so sudden that it’s calling into question how businesses will ever go back to the way they previously operated, since everything is being accomplished successfully digitally. Schools and educational institutes, however, are different and education needs to be resumed the old-fashioned way for more efficacy. The only thing that seems certain, though, is that the IT industry will be profoundly changed and further developed to provide security solutions and prevent further fraud. It will also need to adapt to the needs of businesses and educational facilities.