As businesses begin
to re-open offices while retaining a portion of the flexibility that employees
have enjoyed, many of us are looking to discuss hybrid working models and how
these may work in practice.
Stratia Cyber - an independent cyber security consultancy who provide services
for Commerce and Government, including Defence, are celebrating 10 years as a
dispersed team and have grown and strengthened their business by working
remotely even pre-pandemic. Their team of leading cyber security consultants
are available for expert comments and able to offer their expertise via telephone,
email or Zoom interview.
The Future of Hybrid Working
How can businesses create a connected, safe & supportive hybrid working
model?
Businesses everywhere found their worlds turned upside down overnight when in
Spring 2020, Covid-19 forced organisations to migrate to a dispersed way of
working without warning. More than a year on from when disaster first hit, we
find ourselves in a time when planning for the long-term feels a long way off,
and yet change is surely the only constant. Many feel ready to return to the
office, at least part of the time. So what does this mean for an emerging new
‘hybrid working' model?
Lou Mahanty, is the managing director of Stratia Cyber and former Director of
Intelligence at CSC where he commanded a large supply chain regiment.
"People are much more effective if they are comfortable in their workspace,
wherever that happens to be therefore we should be much more malleable in our
approach. Hybrid working models represent being socially distanced, while
remaining connected. Some people can cope with it, some people can't, and those
who can't need to know that they can seek support from the mothership - the function
that's making sure the workforce remains one whole and maintains productivity.
However, this kind of pastoral care has traditionally not been built into the
way corporations do business."
"This is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity as businesses are currently
thinking about how they change the way they operate to become secure by design.
Now is the time to leverage appetite to design safe practices so that looking
after the health of the business becomes easier. Now is the time to insinuate that
if you want to be everlasting, and you want to be easily able to adapt to new
security situations, you need to make the decisions now that are right for your
specific organisation. You've got this window, and you can and should use it.
Larger and the most switched-on businesses will be looking at that."
In addition to a pastoral care re-think, the hybrid workforce will also add
intricacy to security and IT operations. In many scenarios, workers are moving
between secure office environments with enterprise network monitoring,
firewalls, event and data analytics, to vulnerable home networks that might
have rogue devices, weak passwords or outdated equipment.
"While previously you may have had 4000 people working for you in one
environment, now you've got 4000 separate endpoints, plus access to devices
outside of the office that double or triple that number. One tiny element of
any supply chain lacking the type of protection you'd expect from larger
organisations could introduce potentially huge vulnerabilities. Hybrid working
model or none, attackers only need one way in."
Case Study: Medic Creations
Dr Sandeep Bansal is CEO and founder of Medic Creations, and began working with
Stratia Cyber before Covid-19 became a reality: "We're a technology-led startup
so our set-up included a remote working policy from the get go, allowing us to
work from home if we needed or wanted to. Stratia Cyber has helped us to
understand where our gaps were, and what we can do to build up the existing
security measures we do have in place. On the product side, they've helped us
with penetration testing, and reassessed us once we've made some changes. I
anticipate that Medic Creations and Stratia Cyber will be working much, much
more closely in the future to meet the need to constantly tighten up our
security."