This week’s FAQ Friday is sponsored by Coherent Solutions. Read more about the company and its services at the bottom of this post.
This Week’s FAQ Topic — Security
After we have transitioned to remote work, we have added some tools to enable the workforce to stay connected and communicate effectively. Now, on the one hand, with the vaccine becoming a reality, we may be able to start going back to the office more often. On the other hand, the work from home (WFH) mode is probably going to stay a new normal for many, so how can we continue to take advantage of the good that remote work brought?
Coherent Solutions is able to provide expert cloud migration services.
Even if a vaccine helps us get this pandemic under control, the last few months have clearly demonstrated that, with the right mindset and infrastructure, an information worker can be as productive working remotely as they are in the office.
As this work environment is becoming a new norm, organizations need to take a good look at the plans and procedures they have put in place over the last few months and identify any of the corners that may have been cut to help with the transition. Some tradeoffs may have been made that contributed to building a bit of a “technical debt” in an infrastructure.
Certain changes or implementation steps that may have been evaluated earlier and de-prioritized based on the assumption that we will go back to the office and stay there in the summer will need to be re-evaluated. Companies may have temporarily changed some of their policies or controls to make it easier for employees to transition to work from home, so now is the time to decide which of these changes need to be rolled back.
The specifics will vary from company to company. Still, the main idea we are following is reviewing the decision log for the past few months and deciding whether any decisions need to be done differently now that WFH is a new norm.
We have amped up our security posture to better support remote work. What is the best way to continue to stay in shape?
We have already covered many of the components of the security plan that a company needs to build out to continue securely operating in the new remote work world. Companies should continue executing on that updated plan and follow this simple lifecycle:
Learn -> Design -> Operate -> Audit
By now, many companies are hopefully in the operate phase mostly and should now be actively auditing operations to understand how well everything works and what needs to be changed.
More specifically, organizations should continue monitoring, evaluating risks and updating risk treatment plans, as necessary. Continue performing access audits. Monitor and regularly review access and usage logs to ensure teams are identifying and flagging risky behavior. Now that a person can work from anywhere, people may not be tied to any specific part of the country or even the world when they choose a place to live and work. Implementing conditional access policies that take user location into account will help manage geographical sprawl.
Implementing two-factor authentication universally for any endpoints, cloud services and VPN, along with mobile device management (MDM), will go a long way reducing the risk and simplifying support for remote users.
We have seen some productivity gains from remote work, but there is also some fatigue. How do we fight it?
Not surprisingly, at Coherent, we saw an increase in productivity across the entire organization, from client-facing to IT and infrastructure teams. People are spending less time on the commute. With very seamless transition between home and work environments, even for those of us who are religious about maintaining boundaries between the two, it is still easy to stay around a little longer to finish the task or jump back on after dinner to finish that important conversation or try out that new idea.
However, after so many months of primarily remote work, some fatigue signs are showing. One of the elements people are missing from the office environment is human connection. Also missing is the ability to have an ad-hoc conversation turned brainstorming session in the hallway between meetings. It is also more challenging for many of our new team members who have joined the company in the last several months since they have not been able to spend time with their new teams and get to know people to build those important personal connections.
And while technology is never going to replace a real face-to-face conversation, companies need to look at a new breed of solutions that go beyond traditional messaging and web conferencing to get to new ways to help people connect and collaborate across different scenarios:
- Onboard employees
- Facilitate introductions and informal connections across teams—a virtual water cooler
- Run retrospectives, bringing together teams and customers together and giving everyone a tool to be able to contribute their thoughts
- Run 1-1s and team meetings so leaders can focus on the people and let the system take care of tracking agenda and action items
- … and many more
At Coherent, we have been trying a few of these ourselves recently. I look forward to report back to the tech.mn community on which platforms work best.
More About Our Sponsor
Coherent Solutions is a software product development and consulting company that solves customer business problems by bringing together global expertise, innovation, and creativity. The business helps companies tap into the technology expertise and operational efficiencies made possible by their global delivery model.
Meet Our FAQ Expert
Max Belov, CTO of Coherent Solutions
Max Belov
Max Belov has been with Coherent Solutions since 1998 and became CTO in 2001. He is an accomplished architect and an expert in distributed systems design and implementation. He’s responsible for guiding the strategic direction of the company’s technology services, which include custom software development, data services, DevOps & cloud, quality assurance, and Salesforce.
Max also heads innovation initiatives within Coherent’s R&D lab to develop emerging technology solutions. These initiatives provide customers with top notch technology solutions IoT, blockchain, and AI, among others. Find out more about these solutions and view client videos on the Coherent Solutions YouTube channel.
Max holds a master’s degree in Theoretical Computer Science from Moscow State University. When he isn’t working, he enjoys spending time with his family, on a racetrack, and playing competitive team handball.
