Working from home: The ‘new normal’

As we continue to navigate our way through the effects of the global pandemic and hope to get business back on track fast, we are aware that we have no choice but to adjust to the New Normal in our working environment.

Let me highlight two things:

a. Data is the most sought after and powerful commodity of recent times. It has become more valuable than oil, big data has become its own industry, and we are now living in a data economy. Compliance data is no different, when leveraged correctly it has the potential to identify and prioritize risks, help allocate resources to prioritize risks, and allow companies to make better (more accurately informed) decisions.

b. The coronavirus has imposed changes in the working environment on us and the way we do business now, with emphasis on how we protect the people working for us, in the office and from home, how we protect our systems and our data, and how we create a safe infrastructure in the Work From Home (WFH) environment that is to stay with us, even after Corona19.

DataOne and EITSC organized a webinar wherein our speakers shared their insights about the challenges and actions necessary to keep business sustainable amid prolonged uncertainty and volatility.

We discussed issues and solutions by adopting a more flexible and virtual office set-up, and how we can adapt to GCQ requirements and beyond. We identified compliance and security issues that work-from-home arrangements create, evaluated the technologies available and discussed how they can be deployed to mitigate those risks.

We were certain that businesses will recover faster by developing and implementing new business strategies to adjust to what is considered the new normal. Businesses need to adopt certain technologies to maintain the integrity of processes and protect data in a different environment.At the same time, business operations should not depend on access to an office building, or on IT infrastructure being physically accessed by employees. In order to ensure that businesses can run 24/7, now is the time to embrace technologies such as Cloud computing, teleconferencing, virtual desktops and productivity applications.

Additionally, companies need to reorganize their IT infrastructure to accommodate more flexible WFH arrangements, and this might mean a significant portion of employees will continue to work from home after the ECQ and MCQ. If this is the case, data security and protection become top areas of concern.

We addressed ‘pain points’ in WFH like:

•  Internet connectivity

• VDI setup (equipment, working environment, etc)

• Data Protection and Cyber security

• Employee retention, and

• Customer retention

Given the fact that every modern company has no choice but to gather data and analyze data to stay ahead of the curve, each organization is aware that an effective internal reporting system is the mechanism by which issues can be brought to management’s attention for real-time decision making.

The participants understood that employee training with emphasis on Data Science and Analytics, MS Excel capabilities, and powerful data visualization with MS Power BI, to name a few training areas only, is essential, which we at EITSC offer.

The conclusion of the webinar was clear:

• With WFH going to continue beyond the coronavirus, companies will have to invest more into security infrastructure; that infrastructure is made available by the companies that made experts available for the webinar, such as Global Technology & Information Security and VMware, Inc;

• The training of employees on the operational level is essential so that data breaches can be avoided.

• Use data and leverage actionable insights to help your organization make the right decisions.

If you are interested in the details of the webinar, send me an email – [email protected]