3 Security Priorities to Support the New Hybrid Workplace
In an increasingly digital world, security has rapidly evolved from a defensive play to a strategic imperative for all businesses. Adding the events of the last 18 months into the mix has only served to heighten today’s business decision-makers’ need for strategies—and technology—to ensure the security and privacy of their company and customer data. The way we all work has fundamentally changed. With so many businesses moving to a remote workforce overnight and, now, transitioning to a new hybrid work environment, once centrally-located teams are now spread across locations—even across the globe. At the same time, the way customers engage with brands and the way they want to be served is also fundamentally changing. Customers want to engage with the brands through communication modes of their choosing—whether voice, video or messaging—and expect a seamless transition between these modes.
This new, modern workplace and evolving customer engagement modalities have tremendous advantages for businesses across industries. Health care providers can provide remote and telehealth care to those who might not otherwise have access to life-saving services; students have the ability to continue their studies and maintain a sense of normalcy under the most challenging of conditions and, for businesses, the talent pool is now limitless as the boundaries of location are eliminated. Technology has enabled us all to quickly and, mostly, easily transition to this new way of living and working—the results of which have been nothing short of remarkable.
But with these advantages come unique challenges, especially with security.
Here’s a list of the top three priorities that should be top-of-mind for all security-minded businesses navigating our new world:
Security, Privacy, Trust and Compliance by Design
Simply put, these fundamentals must permeate everything you do—from products and services for customers to tools and technologies that enable employee productivity—from the get-go. This includes secure software development life cycle (SSDLC) where security and privacy is designed into products and where engineers are trained on modern secure software development and deployment techniques, as well as user experience accounts for intuitive security and privacy features. Another key aspect of this principle is zero-trust architecture and infrastructure design to protect modern digital environments by leveraging network segmentation and granular role-based access controls (RBAC) to ensure a user-friendly, robust security posture.
Security Testing, Monitoring, and Response Preparedness
Preparedness has taken on a new meaning this past year and a half, marking the difference between businesses that have survived the pandemic and those that have struggled, or even failed. Today, when it comes to security and privacy, preparedness means continuously testing security postures—both through internal testing and external testing by engaging third-party security and compliance assessments as well as engaging leading global security researchers/testers.
A Security-First Culture
Security is a complex and ever-changing area and requires the participation of and buy-in from all employees at every level. With this priority in mind, making security accessible—informational resources, runbooks, targeted training for attack vectors such as phishing, secure coding practices, etc.—will help any business to develop a strong culture of security first.
As businesses constantly evolve and transition the ways they remain connected with their stakeholders through various hybrid environments, it is essential that CIOs, CISOs and business decision-makers place an extra emphasis on these priorities and an overall security-first approach.
The way we work, shop, learn, see a doctor, even exercise has changed—likely forever. Now, more than ever, businesses rely on cloud communications to seamlessly connect employees, customers and partners across the globe to create better, more personalized experiences—from anywhere. A security-first approach will be imperative for businesses’ resilience in this new environment.
We are just at the beginning of this communications revolution and it’s going to transform every business, every industry and every customer interaction. As software, cloud communication, and API innovations continue to digitize the world, we must all remain committed to making security a priority.
