provide the infrastructure to a distributed
workforce, with each ‘worker’ having
individual set-ups away from their office.
More importantly it means providing
access to business applications from
outside of the company network.
Today’s company network is protected
at great expense with a variety of
technologies and strategies from
sandbox to subnet, firewalls and proxies,
malware and DLP, to name a few, as well
as personnel education.
Key and critical applications were
provided to specific workers on
company machines through a company
network – think of HR and the HRMS
system, or finance and ERP. And even
with these measures in place, breaches
occur and for well-known organisations
are highly publicised and very costly.
Now imagine the increase in vulnerability
and subsequent risk when access to
the same critical applications is needed
across hundreds of personal devices
from outside of a protected network –
and imagine the hair pulling of ITOps
and SecOps teams throughout the land
as they struggle with this.
So, access is key to enable WFH for the
protection of the employee, but secured
access is critical to the protection of
the business. And all talk naturally
focuses on Secured Unified Endpoint
Management (SUEM), whether this is
done via several different technologies
or you are fortunate to utilise a single
platform that delivers this capability.
Can you outline some of the key
benefits of remote working?
I am sure we have all experienced the
good, the bad and the ugly of remote
working. The most common feedback I
have heard, from many of my colleagues
and friends, is that they are simply more
productive – with conference call after
conference call possible and all systems
at their fingertips.
From a cost efficiency perspective,
there are many instances of companies
re-assigning budgets; travel factored
cost of sales reducing; customer
engagement, including training, now
being led remotely; real estate and
floorspace needs being re-examined;
events expenditure being shelved in
favour of other marketing activities.
This may also include cases where
companies are estimating the average
weekly coffee and kitchen spend
and funnelling that to other areas of
the business.
Collaboration between functions and
locations has improved – no longer
siloed by a physical desk behind a
physical door within a physical team,
many people from various departments
are ‘meeting’ for the first time.
64 Issue 25 | www.intelligentciso.com