Technology, Cyber Security & the new modern workplace

A secure workplace refers to an environment where measures are in place to protect the physical, digital, and psychological well-being of employees and assets. It encompasses various aspects of security to ensure a safe and trusted working environment.

1. Physical Security: Physical security measures involve safeguarding the premises, facilities, and employees from unauthorized access, theft, vandalism, or any physical harm. This includes features such as access control systems, surveillance cameras, alarms, secure entryways, and secure storage for sensitive materials.
2. Information Security: Information security focuses on protecting digital assets, data, and technology systems from unauthorized access, data breaches, cyber threats, and other forms of digital harm. It involves implementing security protocols, firewalls, encryption, regular software updates, employee training on cybersecurity best practices, and incident response plans.
3. Employee Safety: Ensuring employee safety is paramount in a secure workplace. This involves conducting risk assessments, implementing safety protocols, providing adequate training on emergency procedures, maintaining a safe working environment, addressing physical hazards, and promoting a culture of safety awareness.
4. Data Privacy: Protecting employee and customer data privacy is crucial. A secure workplace ensures that personal and sensitive information is handled in compliance with applicable data protection laws. It involves implementing data privacy policies, access controls, encryption, and regularly updating privacy practices to maintain confidentiality and integrity of data.
5. Crisis Management: Having robust crisis management plans in place prepares the organization to respond effectively to emergencies, such as natural disasters, security threats, or other critical incidents. These plans include communication strategies, emergency response procedures, evacuation plans, and business continuity strategies to minimize disruptions and ensure the safety of employees.
6. Employee Well-being: A secure workplace also prioritizes the psychological and emotional well-being of employees. It includes fostering a positive work environment, promoting work-life balance, offering employee assistance programs, providing resources for mental health support, and encouraging open communication to address any concerns or issues.
7. Compliance with Regulations: A secure workplace adheres to applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards related to workplace safety, data protection, privacy, and security. This involves staying updated on regulatory requirements, conducting regular audits, and implementing necessary measures to ensure compliance.
8. Training and Awareness: Regular employee training and awareness programs are essential to promote security-conscious behavior, equip employees with the knowledge to identify security risks, and reinforce security best practices. This includes training on physical security protocols, cybersecurity awareness, data handling practices, and response to emergencies.

By implementing and maintaining these components, organizations can create a secure workplace that protects employees, assets, and data while fostering a culture of safety, trust, and well-being.

In today’s highly competitive business world, innovation is the key to success. One way for leaders to drive innovation and improve their products and services is by leveraging technology.

With the advent of new and advanced technologies, businesses can create new opportunities, streamline processes and enhance the overall customer experience, ultimately leading to increased revenue and growth for their business.

Some of the more popular technology advancements businesses are making to help their businesses operate more efficiently are:

Cloud is one of the best tools that a business can use in order to become more productive.  Migrating to the cloud provides an enormous amount of flexibility to how a business operates and the teams collaborate and work.  Employees can now access any document or application they need regardless of if they are in the office or not.

In addition, when you are working in the cloud, there is no need for server rooms or maintain your own equipment.

Being able to communicate effectively across a business key for any successful business that encourages collaboration or has remote workers.

A good unified communication solution includes video chat, messaging, and more.  This is imperative for any modern workplace.

Small repetitive tasks can derail an efficient business. If you find a way to make those assignments easier or eliminate them altogether, you’ll save more time and effort than you may have thought.

Another great solution to simply a business’s daily tasks would be to consider automating backend business tasks by implementing Robotic Process Automation. By removing the monotonous tasks that employees have to deal with, companies can reach new levels of productivity.

Automation can reduce error rates to zero percent and can execute a high volume of repetitive tasks across many platforms.

Over the last 2 years we have seen the pandemic kick start the largest remote work experience in the world, which has had a profound impact on the employee experience. 

Today, two years after the pandemic, over 70% of employees have not returned to the office full time forcing companies to permanently consider flexible working hours.  Businesses have been forced to switch to modern, hybrid and technology-based working models. 

Enabling businesses to maintain high levels of collaboration and achieve maximum operational productivity and efficiencies, technology has played a pivotal role in enabling our evolution. 

• Hybrid work models require a reinvented digital campus that replaces the physical office, where employees interact virtually with colleagues and supervisors.
• The many fragmented business systems required for remote work must be unified under “one pane of glass”; to maximize employee productivity.
• Research shows that more frequent use of digital tools increases fatigue. However, the latest platforms are encouraging employees to take breaks, go for walks and even meditate, increasing employee productivity and mental health.
• Due to the increase in the the use of many devices across varying location, it goes without saying that Cybersecurity must be front of mind when working with remote platforms and collaboration tools.

Technological evolution has intensified the emergence of new technologies like cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the IoTs that are connected to newer devices.

IoT has become a prime target for cybercriminals and many businesses have started incorporating AI and ML technologies which lead to the development of more algorithmic biases leading to security blind-spots.

Finally, the widespread adoption of 5G technology will enable hackers to launch more powerful attacks, causing more damage due to the availability of higher bandwidth.

As organizations accelerate their digital transformation efforts, they rely on third parties such as cloud providers, automation, and IoT to power these initiatives. In the past few years, businesses outside of IT have embraced new technologies more readily, increasing shadow IT, making it harder to assess the businesses risk profile.

Even though third-party services can greatly improve the performance of a business, without a well considered risk management program in place, the risks can outperform the benefits.

One of the biggest concerns for businesses adopting third-party cloud services is the risk of these providers exposing their data worldwide. Failure to manage these threats and risks can result in financial loss and reputational damage, it is imperative to address third-party risks with the same level of care and diligence as internal risk management practices.

In a bid to digitally transform, most businesses are adopting cloud-based computing services, which enable them to access computer applications, data storage, and other services over the internet rather than relying on physical infrastructure. Businesses today are constantly moving their servers and data to the cloud to transform their business process and become more data-efficient digitally.

While businesses generally achieve greater efficiencies and operational productivity from migrating to the cloud, rapid cloud migration can create a host of security challenges and vulnerabilities to cyber threats.

Some of the common cloud-based security threats include:

• misconfigured cloud storage,
• incomplete data deletion,
• reduced visibility and control,
• vulnerable cloud apps.

The convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) poses a challenge to organizations’ digital security.

While IT consists of hardware, software, computers, and other telecommunications devices that support business processes.  OT is composed of vendor-specific, proprietary technologies that execute actual operations.

Historically, the IT and OT teams did not work together, however today, there is a need to develop a new ITOTSecOps methodology that addresses explicitly how IT and OT systems interact. Integrating IT and OT environments are primarily driven by the need for optimization.

Globally, there is a digital skills shortage and cyber security skills are particularly vulnerable since the job descriptions change to reflect the technological advances and user requirements.  It isn’t easy to obtain formal qualifications for cyber security or trade governance, and unlike most industries in tech, there is little diversity.

Innovations in technology continue to impact businesses digital security. The advancement of technology has opened many doors for cyber crime, including hacking, data theft and damage, and industrial espionage.

As Technological trends keep emerging, business must adopt a proactive IT security posture to combat potential cybersecurity threats and create a digital cybersecurity practice as per business needs that strive to secure their critical assets.

Cyberattacks can be easily prevented by updating software regularly, educating employees about email phishing campaigns, and implementing two-factor and email authentication.  We also recommend complying with the ACSC Essential Eight maturity level 2 to help you create the best cyber security practices that are capable of defending your business against data breaches and strengthening your network security against increasingly complex cyberattacks.

The modern workplace provides compelling long term business benefits.  From reduced costs and improved productivity to enhanced employee experience.  But making it scalable and sustainable demands robust, secure workplace foundations and we can help you build them.

KMT can help you with a comprehensive Managed Security Service that will support your employees to work securely, while enabling you to protect yourself from  evolving threats and future disruptions.

We can help to simplify your security strategy, protect your data, devices and users, with robust digital identity solutions so that you can harness the power of a modern workplace experience.

For more information, feel free to Contact Us today.