KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 — With the threat of the new Covid-19 variant Omicron making its way around the world, businesses are encouraged to enhance their hybrid working environment, said Ivanti vice-president for Asia Pacific Andrew Souter.
United States-based Ivanti is the automation platform that manages, secures, and services IT assets for organisations.
Souter noted that with the new Omicron variant, no one really knows what will happen in the next few months, hence there is a need to embrace a new working environment for organisations around the world.
He said a hybrid workforce has proven to increase the productivity of employees in organisations as the work is being done with flexible working hours.
“There are fewer distractions for employees when they work remotely, you can actually focus on specific tasks instead of being distracted by teams of people or constant distractions in the office,” he told Bernama in an exclusive interview today.
“We have worked with a lot of companies in banking and finance, education, and retail and they have all changed the way they offer their services to end-users, and stated that they will not go back to the normal ways of working.”
According to Souter, studies by Ivanti over the last 18 to 24 months have shown that on average, close to 50 per cent of employees want a balanced working environment where they get to choose where they work from.
“The new normal is a hybrid workplace, and companies that do not offer this flexibility are not going to get the next generation of employees because of the different approach in the working environment,” he added.
Souter reckons that security has been the biggest challenge for businesses in adopting a hybrid workforce or remote working environment as the perimeter of security is now widened to everyone’s network instead of the company itself.
The biggest issue faced by IT personnel is still about passwords, where users are now being compromised because cybercriminals know that users are working from home and the security levels of their network are not probably as good as the office’s network, he said.
“At Ivanti, we adopt a zero-trust methodology where we assume that everything, including the network and devices, has been compromised, hence there is a need to verify all of them,” he added.
“We offer our users security enhancement in their network by providing them with secure access or Virtual Private Network (VPN) and self-healing or automation processes where any security breach issues can resolve itself.”
— Bernama
