by AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG – CONSIDERING growing cyber security threats and business continuity risks such as infrastructural outages and physical crime, a sustained shift towards hybrid work demands that large organisations look at business security and resilience challenges holistically.
Nashua Kopano Managing Director, Chris Kruger
The complexity of getting this right threatens to overwhelm time- and budget-strapped information technology departments.
That is according to Chris Kruger, Managing Director, Nashua Kopano, a total workplace solutions provider that focuses on enterprises and government clients.
He said while some companies have called some teams and employees back to the office for the entire working week, hybrid and flexible work has become the standard operating model for many roles and organisations.
“Over the past few years, we have seen a shift towards more decentralised working models, with mobile connectivity enabling people to carry out processes and transact from nearly anywhere,” Kruger said.
He noted many organisations were still grappling with the complexity of ensuring security, resilience and continuity when some work gets done outside the corporate firewall and the campus.
“IT functions need to gear themselves up for a world of anywhere operations,” Kruger said.
He said cyber security is the issue that has drawn the most attention. With employees working on unsecured home and public networks, companies have less control over network security. Furthermore, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) models mean that many people work from personal devices rather than secured, company-issued PCs and smart devices.
Employees working from home may also be more susceptible to social engineering scams.
The 2023 WFA Global study found that two-thirds of companies in South Africa have reported data breaches due to work-from-anywhere vulnerabilities.
“This highlights the importance of embracing an augmented defence and a unified management approach for endpoint security,” said Kruger.
Kruger said beyond cyber security, large enterprises are evaluating other threats to business continuity.
“With the load shedding crisis that South Africa currently faces, for example, there is a growing interest in alternative energy and power backup solutions that can help keep branches, offices and remote teams productive throughout power outages.”
– CAJ News
