Technology in the Workplace – post pandemic (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Jacksonville Business Journal Publisher and Market President, Sara Leutzinger Pomposo moderated a discussion with Matthew Chang, Owner of Chang Industrial, Philipp Graves, CEO of Antisyn and Ciaran O’ Flaherty- Chief Technology Officer at Coastal Cloud around Technology in the Workplace – post pandemic.
Sara: How do you think COVID-19 has shaped the future in general for business as it relates to IT solutions?
Ciaran: Going forward, I believe businesses will continue their move to the cloud and cloud-based solutions as they seek more flexibility, better security and scalability. Businesses have become open to working in more of an agile framework and building IT solutions in an iterative manner because frankly COVID drove the need for quick and fast solutions. We needed to operate in a contactless world. All business processes, even ours as an IT services provider, needed to adapt and change. I think it’s just changed the way that we build and deliver IT solutions and I don’t see that really changing as we emerge from quarantine.
Matthew: I think the demand for cloud has become more permanent. The big change for workers is that they’re expected to do the same work, but off premise. Now they must be able to offer the same collaboration and the same communication to employees when they’re distributed. Now, I think we’re going to start to see migration of people. There’s a certain category of people that are going to say work from home is now standard offering in my job description. And so, as businesses start to recall them, they must address the flexibility of part-time work from home yet keep that collaboration aspect alive. A lot of companies didn’t have some of the more dynamic communication and collaboration tools for employees.
The other one is the demand for e-commerce. Previously there was kind of a threshold of e-commerce, certain size businesses had it. And that was necessary for competition against an Amazon or a Walmart. But now during the pandemic, what you had is every single business, including a coffee shop, turned to e-commerce. They had to provide their curbside service. They had to provide order ahead and delivery and new services that had to scale down to the micro business. And so, I’d say that’s another kind of a major shift that changes the IT landscape is how can every size business have an e-commerce solution.
Philipp: The pandemic has completely changed the way people work. More individuals than ever are working remotely, and this shift requires businesses to rethink their IT systems. From a productivity and collaboration standpoint, it’s incredibly important that the right systems and tools are in place to facilitate remote workers being able to stay connected with the rest of the company. From an IT systems standpoint, this is meaning even faster adoption of cloud technologies as less companies want their technologies tied directly to their office. However, from a cybersecurity standpoint all these new cloud systems and employees working remotely poses many new challenges. Traditionally many layers of security were implemented into the corporate network at the office and now these same layers of protection must be rolled out to a distributed workforce where many employees are simply using their home network connection. This means that cybersecurity strategies must be re-evaluated to adapt to a very different workplace environment than we had just a few short years ago.
Sara: With the migration to companies becoming more digital via remote work and cloud computing, what plan should the company also implement, not just the IT department to become more digital and efficient with the latest business technology?
Philipp: There are a lot of great technologies and strategies to help businesses, but I’m going to encourage businesses spend extra energy making sure they have a plan to maintain and encourage their culture. It’s important you have the right technologies and tools, but those systems can only succeed if your people are happy and successful too. Going more digital and working remotely can make it easy for some of the most valuable pieces of your culture to slip away. So, if your business is transitioning to more digital systems or more remote work, don’t forget to focus on your people and let that help drive some of your other technology and system decisions so that you can continue to foster the culture you want for your company.
Matthew: The biggest thing that companies must do is recognize the new normal in terms of employee expectations. You’re going to have the entire spectrum. You’re going to have certain employees who want to work from the office. There’s comfort there. There might even be a peace and quiet there and high-speed internet so they like working at the office. However, there’s a new permanent class of migratory employees who work from home. Some take it to an extreme and even go to another country to work, stay plugged in and do the same job that was done in the office. Then you have folks in the middle. I think the most productive strategy for a company right now is to offer a flexible work program where employees have the chance to work in the office when the face-to-face time is valuable, and they have a chance to work from home when it’s more computer facing work. Companies must update their policies.
Sara: How does all this change, what do businesses need to do to keep themselves secure?
Ciaran: Companies will have to be diligent about their cyber security training and help their employees adapt to working securely in a hybrid work environment. There are technologies that can be enabled to help detect and prevent attacks, however employee awareness and behaviors are a very important part of that equation too. It will be increasingly important to make sure the right cybersecurity hygiene is in place, and that training is provided to ensure everybody is comfortable operating in this new environment. Every year, Verizon does a comprehensive study around cybersecurity data breaches. In 2020, they reported a rise in classic email phishing attacks. They reported that there is an even higher propensity for people to be vulnerable to those when they’re working remotely from home. So again, being diligent about cybersecurity, making sure people are trained regularly and making it part of your culture will be important in the future.
Philipp: Now, more than ever, cyber security is a moving target. Safe today is not safe tomorrow. Businesses need to make sure that they’re regularly re-evaluating their areas of exposure and risk. Then, using that information, they need to maintain a clear cybersecurity strategy that goes beyond just technology systems. People are the most important factor when it comes to cyber security. Just like businesses promote activities designed to maintain a safe workplace, businesses now need to foster a culture of security to properly protect their organization.
Matthew: Every company needs to be on a multi-factor authentication. Yet, there are still businesses that are on a single log-in. As we mentioned, data breaches are now business as usual. So once that login is compromised, or it’s been phished, then the company may have access to a lot of sensitive information or systems. Multifactor authentication is table stakes for anything critical in a business. That’s the first layer of protection. The second thing I think we need to address is the potential for ransomware or ransom attacks. Some that have happened have not been publicized in the media because it might affect a company’s stock price. I have also seen the ones that do make it into the media and affect national shortages like gasoline distribution. It will be vital that our information security experts simulate and run through drills on what happens in a ransomware attack. That is where the cloud and on-premises resiliency piece come into play. Business systems must be set up to where even if part of their system is compromised and goes down, the core function can still be performed. That is very challenging.