Remote Work Complicated the Storage and Protection of Data
When the pandemic sent people away from their offices for an extended period, companies had to find ways to equip their employees to perform their jobs remotely. A dramatic increase in devices and locations meant that a company’s data was being shared like it never had been before.
In an April 20 webcast, Stephen Manley, CTO at Druva, made note of the shift from on-premises data centers to the cloud. “What we’ve seen is that the data center is no longer the center for all the data. One of the key things I think to realize in this is that I don’t think people adopted it because they said, ‘I want my data in different places.’ It’s always the apps that drive us, so you saw this this big surge toward SaaS applications.”
“When we started talking endpoints, that leads you to the edge, and that’s really where I think you’re going to see a lot of growth in the next couple of years. Data has really become sprawled all over the place, not because people said, ‘I want my data sprawled all over the place,” but because they said, ‘I’m running applications, and that’s where my applications are running,” Manley said.
With data spread out, the need to protect that data became a priority. In a March 2 webcast, Gabe Whalen, principal field solution architect at CDW, spoke about the individual employee’s role in maintaining data security.
“I think fundamentally, security relies on everyone in your team, whether it’s a second party, third party or your employee responding when they see something happening,” Whalen said. “There’s nothing quite as demoralizing as when an employee does do the appropriate thing and it falls on deaf ears, or it doesn’t go anywhere. Then we start learning about shadow security and the effectiveness of an organization. I think responding to those employee concerns in a quick manner and staying transparent helps keep that level of interest across the organization.”
HEAR MORE: Check out the full March 2 webcast to learn more about employees' role in security.
The Workplace Has Changed Significantly, and Perhaps Permanently
Now that business leaders are considering a return to the office, even one that includes some element of remote work, those workspaces must change to address new needs and concerns.
Stephen Miller, brand ambassador at Lenovo, spoke March 16 about the changing needs of a distributed workforce. According to Miller, some companies will need less real estate than they did prior to the pandemic. And many companies will choose to remodel their spaces.
“Headquarters should become collaboration centers,” he said. “Why rows of cubes? Why not areas where I can huddle, and I come in because I want to see my team and we really need to be together — not a space like Cube World. We need a space where nine of us can huddle with the others, knock this out in person, and then commute at 1 p.m., not at 4 p.m. in rush hour. Headquarters needs to evolve into a collaboration center.”