12 October 2023

Paul Taylor MBA, MBCS, FRSA, CMgr FCMI, FHEA, MIOD, network and cyber security board advisor,
Value Tech Factor Ltd

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business and society in general has been profound with far reaching consequences for the way we all live and work.

One of the more material changes was the establishment of hybrid and remote working practices as the new norm for most businesses. While this has led to some benefits for enterprises and employees, many organisations were forced to deploy reactive hybrid work strategies to survive under lockdown rules imposed virtually overnight. The rushed nature of these changes meant the decisions made were very reactive and made with little time for proper strategic planning. This inevitably meant that mistakes were made. But now by having had time to reflect, organisations (and their network managers) are now realising the flaws in their hybrid work models and are looking for better more fit-for-purpose solutions.

While the pandemic is now hopefully behind us, a recent study shows that 81% of C-Suite executives believe that hybrid working will be the primary working model by 2024, with 56% of work done remotely. This means that remote and hybrid working is here to stay which creates some real challenges for network managers.

Firstly, it is essential that hybrid workers are provided with the same safe privileged access to corporate networks and information systems, as if they are in a physical office. This means that network managers must invest in new system and infrastructure that not only meet today’s current challenges but is sufficient robust to deal with whatever threats come along in the future.

Secondly, many organisations also allow access to their network to other groups such as suppliers, contractors and even customers. These groups will also need to be protected in a similar manner.

Thirdly, faced with limited options, most organisations have selected the financially expensive route of issuing laptops and / or deploying legacy virtual desktop solutions (which were not designed for a large remote workforce) to support remote working. In addition to these financial costs, there are logistical challenges of shipping laptops to remote workers with the associated risks of damage, items being lost and susceptibility to theft. Furthermore (per IDC) 98% of organisations are concerned about ensuring there is effective remote support, secure access, and technology consistency across worksites to allow teams to work together. Finally, organisations need to deploy robust cybersecurity solutions to restrict access to the essential business data and applications/tools to allow individuals to carry out their job.

Fourthly, these issues are further extended because remote workers often develop poor security habits (compared with working in an office environment) and could be targeted by hackers looking for a back door into corporate networks and ransomware attacks.

Also, it does not help that, most traditional, or older Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions do not contain the required robustness to mitigate against these risks and provide sufficient protection. For example, they may not have multi-factor authentication (MFA), anti-virus tools, inbuilt firewalls, compliance monitoring and automated software updates.

All these issues have created some real challenges for network and IT managers. It is important not to forget that network and IT managers still have the ‘normal’ business-as-usual challenges of running their network. For example, ensuring there is sufficient capacify to cope with demand, ensuring networks are reliable and have sufficient contingency and/or redundancy in place. These challenges are not helped by macro external factors such as the cost of living and the general pressure to reduce costs.

The bottom line is that it is essential that network and IT managers are able to successfully manage these risks both efficiently and effectively to ensure they provide the necessary safe infrastructure to ensure their business can continue to remain competitive or in some cases even just survive.
This means network and IT managers need to invest both time and money in a robust integrated long-term platform and ensure they have the required skills and capabilities to manage it properly.

To allow this to happen, network and IT managers need to select and implement VDI platforms which will have features covering built-in automated compliance and AI based identity verification tools. These will ensure the security risks posed to their infrastructure are managed and mitigated as much as possible.

Previously this selection process was often laborious or torturous. The full end-to-end procurement would often cover several sequential steps (such as product selection, commercial negotiations, and implementation) which meant the entire procedure was complex and required a large amount of effort and time. Also, these selection processes were often perceived to deflect resource and management away from other ‘more meaningful ‘projects and initiatives which meant it was challenged to obtain support from senior stakeholders.

However, today’s more modern VDI solutions can now offer network managers a feature-rich, secure by designed hybrid work platform straight out of the box. This means enterprises can launch role-based, ready-to-work, productive, secure digital environments for anyone anywhere in the world. These can be rolled out (and importantly, revoked) very quickly on a pay per use basis to enable effective cost control and immediate protection.