In early 2020, businesses all over the world faced the ultimate dilemma of how to continue doing business or even stay in business and operate, whilst at the same time addressing one of the biggest challenges the human race has faced to date. All this happened while having over 50 percent of the global population locked down at home due to the spread of a biological pathogen, resulting in a low civilian mobility similar to that in the 1950s.
We live on a planet where we are hyper-connected, where privacy and cybersecurity are foremost in our digital minds, but biologically, we have yet to conquer that same sense of security. And one has dramatic effects on the other. We have become reliant on being digital natives.
With the global impact of COVID-19, the commercial world has been forced to assess business models and ways of working just to survive, let alone improve. We were digital natives relying on technology to “just do” what we needed it to do but had become digitally naïve to think that it would not have exploitable weaknesses. Digital investment and security costs appeared prohibitive, and many organizations did not make them a priority.
At the same time, most organizations saw a flexible digital workforce to be of secondary importance with employees needing only to be provided with a mobile phone and a laptop in order to be flexible and have the ability to “work at home.”
After the pandemic hit, while we may have locked down the workforce to reduce the spread of a biological pathogen (the biological R naught, or contagion level), inadvertently we may have just increased the digital R naught for many businesses – the scale of which may not be felt for many weeks or months to come. The breaches may have already occurred.
This e-book describes the steps that enterprises should take to ensure they can move to a flexible working model, safe in the knowledge that they have moved the security dial to make it much harder, if not impossible, for corporate data to be breached over a remote working model.
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About the author
Iain Fisher
Iain leads ISG’s Future of Work, Customer Experience and ESG solutioning redefining business models and operating models to drive out new ways of working with a CX and ESG focus. He joins up end to end value chains across a number of markets and advises clients on where digital and technology can be used to maximise benefit. A regular Keynote speaker and online presenter, Iain has also authored several eBooks on these subjects.
