Of late, the world has witnessed myriad changes which have completely altered our perspective towards life itself. Taking about change, one would agree that the corporate world is not far behind. Things like work from home, flexible working hours, virtual events, webinars, virtual meetings etc. are all part of what we identify as ‘The New Normal’.
It’s no foreign concept that the age of digitization has already started and it has completely taken over our day to day lives. With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world experienced massive paradigm shift in terms of remote working figures. This indeed has given momentum to rapid advancements in the Digital Workplace, which is predominantly defined by the set of digital tools that enable employees to get their work done on a cloud-based platform.
Such a level of disruption often comes with its own set of challenges and this is where securing the Digital Workplace becomes paramount, specially considering that the whole world is now transitioning towards it.
As per a report by Verizon, 86 percent of the organizations across the world projected that digital workplace will coexist with the physical workspace post COVID-19 and with 78 percent of them expecting to increase the volume of remote work being conducted.
Countries around the world are actively seeking the digital transformation route to enable more productivity. For instance, in 2020 the Philippine’s government announced ‘The Full Digital Transformation Act of 2020’ that mandates all their government agencies including controlled corporations to adopt a digitalization plan that aligns with the ‘Philippine Digital Transformation Strategy 2022’, with an aim to enable fully digital government services. This again poses a lot of security issues which might stand in the way of overall development.
Let’s look at the 5 best practices to secure the Digital Workplace in the post-COVID world:
1. Creating a solid Cybersecurity policy: Cybersecurity policy is often used as an umbrella term as it encompasses the complete set of procedures, measures, and resources required by organizations to effectively identify, prevent and respond to the cyber threats.
It lists out all the strict guidelines that the entire organization and its employees should adhere to, thereby explaining what actions can lead to cyberthreats or make their private data more vulnerable for all kinds of cyberattacks.
It is extremely crucial to use the cybersecurity policy as part of the awareness process for the employees regarding cybercrimes.
2. Wi-Fi and Device security: Digital workplace and remote working often go hand in hand. And, many a time an employee for various reason uses personal Wi-fi and computer or smartphone instead of corporate-issued devices and network to carry out official tasks. This in turn makes the whole situation more prone for cybercrimes as personal devices and networks may not comply to the IT’s standards, or can be filled with numerous malicious software and unchecked security updates.
Therefore, as a rule of thumb it’s important to use only the corporate-issued devices and networks at all costs for all official tasks, does not matter how insignificant the task might be.
3. Awareness and training: It goes without saying that with rapid advancements in digital technology, even the hackers are constantly evolving. So, the entire business as a whole should prepare in advance for enabling a constant vigilance and should not leave the whole process to the IT department.
Awareness and training regarding security issues should therefore be a continuous process, starting from the day of induction. As every single employee regardless of the department plays an important role in a digital workplace to keep security in check.
4. Access control: In order to prevent attackers from accessing any private information, it’s wise to enable multi-factor authentication for the users. So, even after getting their hands on a compromised password, the attackers can’t get access to any private/confidential information.
Another noteworthy fact is that a majority of attacks at company networks happen from within the company. Therefore, it is important to categorize data that falls in the various domains and grant access to only those employees who actually need it or hail from the same domain. Such a practise at a digital workplace will lead to better management and control.
At CyFrica 2021 (an annual cybersecurity conference), Ravi Baldev, the manager for Systems Engineering at Dell Technologies – DPS Division, while enlightening on the same topic said, “You got to know your customer but you got to know your team as well. It just takes one rogue individual or an unhappy admin to go into the air gap and destroy the golden copies.”
5. Keep a tab on updates: For efficient digital workplace solutions, it is essential to regularly check the system updates. As developers are constantly trying to find security related flaws that can be exploited by the hackers through malware. Without those updates your network and data might become more vulnerable to the cyber criminals.