2020 will go down as one of the most stressful in my career as a cybersecurity professional. I have been working in this area of law full time since 2003. So that says a lot.

On top of the stress of the spread of the coronavirus, this has been a particularly stressful year assisting clients with security incidents, ransomware extortions, data security in migrating from on premises to work from home, and keeping employees educated and vigilant. Indeed, it has been difficult and exhausting. And I’m just the lawyer.

Your IT professionals have been through HELL this year. They are working beyond capacity, with limited resources, trying to keep organizations safe from highly sophisticated hackers and nation states, including Russia and China. They are doing their very best to find the right tools to keep the bad guys out of networks and systems, at the same time trying to get their users not to click on links, attachments or phishing emails. They are getting attacked from within and without. It is a war for them every day.

Give them some love. A thank you goes a long way. Our IT professionals are losing sleep every night, working long hours, keeping our data safe, and dealing with attacks that you can’t even begin to fathom.

They battle for us in the background, on the front line, and never get any credit for how important their job is to our ability to do our job.

So this holiday season, take a little time and reach out to your IT professionals and say “Thank you.” They deserve a ton of credit and LOVE from all of us.