The right approach to hybrid work

Hybrid work is here to stay. It is an exciting new world filled with the power and potential to transform business; as every organisation is unique, each will adopt its own approach to hybrid. HP Global Hybrid Working Survey finding have shown that 11% of global workforce are working exclusively from the office, 6% are working exclusively from home and 70% are working a blend of two to four days from the office, with the remainder from home. This means we must embrace hybrid work as a long-term reality, and we must make it work for all.

The right approach to hybrid work depends on optimising businesses technology, processes, and culture to meet the needs of their workforce. HP believes that success lies in embracing three crucial C’s – Connection, Clarity, and Collaboration – at the heart of the new hybrid working culture.

Organisations worldwide continue to encounter sophisticated cyber threats that hold the potential to disrupt business operations. A vast majority of those threats can go undetected, or they are detected too late for an organisation to avoid risk. There will not be an unlimited treasure chest of money to devote to cybersecurity in 2023, so it is important to be intentional about where to invest.

Compliance is not the only aspect of good governance – it is about properly managing your company’s resources and budget. Knowing which areas expose the company to the most risk will be crucial in understanding the security issues at hand.

With a strong cybersecurity foundation, organisations can ensure maximum resiliency for anything that gets through. It is key that organisations start asking the right questions about how devices are designed with security and resilience in mind down to the hardware and firmware levels. As attacks against users increase, having security baked into people’s PCs from the hardware up – so they can easily prevent, detect and recover from attacks using tools like HP Sure Recover – will be essential.

Threat containment technology like HP Sure Click Enterprise help defend against the most common attacks, the malware can’t infect anything. This way organisations can reduce their attack surface and protect employees without hindering their workflows.

In 2023, organisations should take control of firmware security. Firmware attacks were once only used by sophisticated Advanced Persistent Threat groups and nation states. But over the last year, we have seen signs of increased development and trading of capabilities in the cybercrime community – from tools to hack BIOS passwords, to rootkits and trojans targeting device BIOS Basic Input/Output System and UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.

Access to the firmware level enables attackers to gain persistent control and hide below the device Operating System, making them very hard to detect – let alone remove and take back control. Organisations should also understand and evaluate state of the art technology that is available to protect, detect, and recover from such attacks like HP Sure Start, Sure Recover, Sure Admin, or Tamper Lock.

HP recognises the imperative to minimise the technology industry’s environmental footprint and embraces the opportunity to position itself as a business and technology leader enabling a low-carbon economy. HP is applying rigorous sustainable design principles to help compel progress toward reducing carbon emissions, supporting a circular economy, and protecting and restoring forests. HP designs products for energy efficiency and offers convenient, more sustainable service-based solutions. We also use multiple metrics to assess progress and impel improvement.

HP is also reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain including operations, supply chain, and products. HP has adopted a ‘full circle’ approach to our products and services, in which service-based solutions deliver better value to customers with reduced environmental impact and capital costs.

Key takeaways

• Right approach to hybrid work depends on optimising technology, processes, culture to meet the needs of the workforce.
• Organisations worldwide continue to encounter sophisticated cyber threats that hold the potential to disrupt business operations.
• Compliance is not the only aspect of good governance; it is about properly managing your company’s resources and budget.
• As attacks against users increase, having security baked into people’s PCs from the hardware up, will be essential.