Strategies for protecting your remote workforce
Before the pandemic, some organisations had already begun to adjust their security strategies to enable a shift to remote work. While they may have not foreseen this current crisis, their understanding of the need for an effective business continuity plan, and the inevitable changes being brought about by digital innovation led them to rethink what networks and a digital workforce look like in the 21st century.
This included bolstering the network edge, something which has faced increased risk ever since the prioritisation of mobility, IoT, and 5G. For these prescient organisations, the foundation was already in place to meet the challenges of the distributed workforce being faced today. But for those that did not, it took a large-scale event to realise that the nature of work has already been fundamentally redefined, and that the great shift is happening now, not later.
Below are a few of the measures that companies should take to help them adapt and grow amid this shift.
Ensure alignment of business processes: To enable a secure remote workforce, organisations must align business processes such as finance and HR with best practices around communication privacy and authentication. These processes should also align with cultural processes that promote effective communication in an agile, trust-based environment.
Fund necessary cybersecurity costs by leveraging savings: Permanently shifting a portion of the workforce from centralised offices to home offices will help reduce capital costs like climate control, office infrastructure, and rent or building loans. These cost savings can then be used to fund the necessary technology and cybersecurity costs associated with the new normal of managing an expansive remote workforce.
Ensure your cybersecurity architecture can support this new business architecture: When building or updating network architectures, things like data privacy, integrity, and confidentiality need to be kept top of mind. And these values need to be applied across the network, not just for remote workers. That’s because business applications and workflows need to span from the endpoint to the core network to the company’s distributed edge in the cloud.
Enjoy the benefits of telecommuting: There are countless benefits to enabling a remote workforce and adopting a secure network strategy to support it. The carbon footprint of organisations will be reduced when fewer workers are commuting, and the talent pool will only grow when the search is widened to include those who might not live near the physical headquarters.
The Covid-19 pandemic has presented new challenges for organisations, but amidst the disruption many have found new ways to conduct business while protecting their remote workforce. The best practices listed above encompass this shift, prioritising an investment in employees, business processes, and the architectures that will be relied upon for sustained growth and success. But as your company works to adjust to this new normal, keep in mind the chief message of these events: the future is now, not tomorrow.
Key takeaways
- It took a large-scale event to realise that the nature of work has already been fundamentally redefined.
- Permanently shifting a portion of the workforce from centralised offices to home offices will help reduce capital costs.
- The talent pool will only grow when the search is widened to include those who might not live near the physical headquarters.
