It didn’t take long for COVID-19 to completely alter the way we work. Businesses that succeed in this rapidly changing environment will be the ones that adapt with the same velocity. In our second installment from The Future of Work series, you’ll hear from Webroot Product Marketing Director George Anderson, who shares his perspective on how businesses will need to adapt and evolve to stay on course during and after the global coronavirus pandemic.
How has COVID-19 changed cybersecurity and cyber resilience planning? What will be the most important steps to take moving forward?
In some ways not at all. We were already existing in a fairly perimeter-less network world. There was already a hybrid between on- and off-network staff, and reviewing where data was being worked upon, accessed and secured, and asking how data was being processed and secured during its journey. Many businesses data was already split between user devices and the cloud.
Confidentiality, integrity and availability in the case of cyber-attacks or other forms of potential data loss need to be clearly understood as before, and any weaknesses addressed. The imperative is to have a safe data cloud in place both in terms of security and recovery.
The steps to take include:
- Setting up regular and if practical continuous risk assessment to get visibility of data risks
- Understanding where the greatest risks and weaknesses exist in people, process and technology
- Investing and allocating appropriate budget to address where the greatest data loss and compromises could and would now occur
What could the future look like after the coronavirus? Specifically, what will change in IT and business?
Not everyone will want to choose to continue working from home. While the savings in closing offices down are attractive to businesses, they are not necessarily the same for an employee whose home environment is not conducive to work. These employees may seek alternative employment to remove the burden of working from home if an office option is not available. IT has already, for the most part, moved to the cloud where it can, and remained on-prem where it needs to be because of security, compliance and control. The main IT imperatives will be factors like secure 5G and faster communications for better collaboration.
In business, people buy from people. And face-to-face interaction is the norm. While this will reduce in the near-term, in the long run, peoples’ wellness depends on social interaction. Businesses that ignore that will not thrive. However, businesses are generally going to be more open to remote working roles and a lot better positioned to recruit staff for remote work, without them necessarily being close to physical offices.
IT investments will shift in the coming months, what will take precedence for companies as they go back to ‘business as usual’?
The pandemic will make companies look, in broader terms, at the all the risks to their business. And they’ll use IT where practical to put protections and assistance in place. More holistic Disaster Recovery springs to mind as benefiting from this pandemic, as does better backup of user desktops that particularly among MSPs and SMBS has not been a priority in the past.
What advice do you have for SMBs who will need time and a renewed economy to recover?
There will be many opportunities as the economy comes back and many holes where competitors and others have failed. An approach that is flexible and can react to those opportunities is essential. So, look to business arrangements in IT, Finance, HR and other key areas that will let you maximize your ability to take advantage of new opportunities. If you have not looked to an MSP to help you in the past then now is the time to look at how experts in remote management an remote working like an MSP can help?
For a step by step guide on how to improve business cyber resilience click here.
