How Can IT Teams Tackle Disruption from COVID-19?

Businesses wanting to grow or scale, and not just survive in a post-COVID world, must do more to future-proof their operations. The pandemic has thrown us into the deep end with cloud-based solutions, reshaping how we do things, how we communicate, and how we approach security.

So what does the new landscape look like now? How will it look as we move forward? And how do we adapt to the ‘new normal’ while keeping our data secure? Here are four ways IT teams can manage and overcome disruption in the remote workplace.

Have a security strategy in place

The most important step for IT teams is to have a security strategy for cloud adoption. The ideal situation is having the nimbleness to respond at the speed of COVID impact. That means providing employees with all the tools they need in a remote space, and ramping up migration while being able to deliver a superior SOC.

To manage continuity quickly, businesses have had to patch remote systems that have strained under increased loads, and monitor spiking threat levels as workers log in remotely. And among all the growing risks, there has been a near-sevenfold increase in spear-phishing attacks since the start of the pandemic.

As a result, resource and budget have been consumed by remediation. But as we move forward into a fully distributed workforce and Cloud 3.0, we will need a robust strategy to make security a seamless feature. And as our workplace culture quickly evolves into more people working from home and flexible contracts, IT and Networking will need to have a long-term view of how they can match cybersecurity with the all-digital environment.

Going forward, detection and response will be vital for improving security outcomes with a distributed workforce. As more devices connect to your network (including personal devices), the surface of attack widens, making your business vulnerable to cybercrime. So not only is it essential to have preventative security measures, but an incident response plan should be in place to help your teams cope with incidents or breaches, and determine their scope and risk.

Spot the gaps in People, Processes and Technology

The three pillars of transformation – People, Processes and Technology (PPT) – have always been a careful balancing act, but now more than ever. This means that IT leaders must approach their strategy with a human touch.

It doesn’t matter how fast your technology stack can adapt to changing times. If people aren’t able to keep up with the transformation, productivity will become an issue, as will security and compliance. Therefore, it’s crucial to review the digital literacy of employees across every department. Are teams able to respond to the new ways of working? Do they have the right access to tools and resources, and are they trained in using them? Are there policies in place to ensure they comply with security rules?

While some professionals have adapted well during the pandemic, others have taken longer to get up to speed with technology. The good news is that COVID has forced less digitally-literate workers to acclimatize in time for our impending future of interconnectivity. IT departments should embrace momentum to carve digital strategies for the next few years, with a focus on filling skill gaps through training and targeted recruitment.

Stay flexible and be prepared for change

Few business functions have had to reprioritize as fast, and to such a large extent, as corporate cybersecurity, so IT agility is key. When once business cases were created using five-year forecasts, we must now move with more flexibility. Organizations should build one or two year plans, and accept that technology isn’t going to stay the same.

In order to respond to the ever-changing landscape and meet evolving security requirements, approach to budgeting will have to be different than before, and not as static. Having excellent communication with Finance is just as important, as budgets aren’t going to be easy to stick to, and traditional ROI models may not be applicable to business cases.

It’s worth noting the cybersecurity challenges that organizations have been faced with have also trickled down to suppliers. Tech providers have had to modify their offerings in order to accommodate growing security needs. This means that the solutions are available to help you create a watertight strategy. You just have to know where and how to conduct your research, and how to choose the right services to elevate IT security to a seamless and scalable level.

Embrace machine learning

In addition to ensuring different departments have access to the tools they need to do their jobs, it’s also essential to invest in technology that supports, alleviates and empowers your IT team. By automating processes and harnessing the power of machine learning, you can dramatically reduce analyst workloads, giving them time to focus on more pressing tasks.

In a time where IT and Networking are having to deal with an extended attack surface, features such as automation can make a world of difference to productivity and performance. And with a need for visibility and remediation across your network, any automated services that can cut down manual tasks are worth investing in.