Technology has allowed many businesses and professionals to make the best of both in-office and remote work. As more companies implement a hybrid workplace, it’s essential to equip your organization and ensure flexibility in workforce management strategies.
From maintaining robust cybersecurity measures to fostering a collaborative work environment, we provide valuable insights into emerging tech essentials for hybrid work and how to implement them effectively.
The Hybrid Work Model
Hybrid work models utilize the flexibility of the remote setup and conventional in-office collaboration. When the recent COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world, many organizations adapted to offering flexible work arrangements through working from home.
As we regained momentum, the “new normal” no longer seemed to be the best solution in the workplace. While working from home may offer more flexibility among professionals, it hinders many core aspects of face-to-face business dynamics, such as:
- Collaboration
- Culture-building
- Innovation
- Employee engagement
- Effective mentorship
This prompted many organizations to implement return-to-office (RTO) mandates to mitigate the risks of virtual work. As a result, a new flexible solution was introduced to meet both company and employee demands: hybrid work environments.
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7 Key Hybrid Workplace Technologies and Strategies
Keeping robust online security measures while maintaining a strong company culture can be overwhelming.
It requires businesses to adopt new strategies, processes, and tools. Here are 7 of the best hybrid work essentials for a secure and cohesive hybrid working setup.
1. Use a virtual private network (VPN) and avoid public WiFi.
Accessing public WiFi poses a risk to your confidential company data and user privacy. Hackers can easily navigate through the network and access an employee’s system. This can cause harm through malware or unauthorized access to sensitive information like login credentials, financial data, and intellectual property.
When working remotely, your employees should only access trusted networks. If they truly need to connect to unsecured networks, equip them with a VPN. These tools can mask a device’s IP address to protect its identity through encrypted data tunnels. VPNs are widely used by professionals and companies worldwide to mitigate the risks of working in public areas.
Below are some of the popular VPN tools you can consider. It’s also worth noting that paid versions offer more security than free versions.
- NordVPN
- ExpressVPN
- Surfshark
- Mullvad
- ProtonVPN
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2. Provide work devices with restricted access.
Providing computers or devices specifically for work is very important for hybrid teams.
Suppose your employees can access regular websites on their work computers, such as social media, shopping, downloading, streaming, or gaming websites. This may sound harmless, but it creates an opportunity for cyber attackers to invade your employees’ devices.
Only authorized devices should access company servers, websites, files, and internal systems. This prevents unauthorized access and ensures data security. By limiting access, your employees can’t unintentionally compromise their work devices.
3. Partner with a reliable third-party collaboration tools provider.
For a great remote-work experience, set up your virtual space and provide access to:
- Online virtual meetings
- Instant messaging
- Project management
- File-sharing
- Task management
- Scheduling tools
However, these platforms should have strict protection measures, access controls, secure data centers, and high-level encryption.
While remote and hybrid work setups are becoming more popular, not all tools are designed for large organizations. They may not have security measures in place to protect businesses against cyber threats. Until they can provide more policy control, businesses should evaluate such products to maintain a safe hybrid office space. The key is finding trusted vendors that can provide safe online collaboration, like Microsoft teams, Slack, Zoom, Asana, or Trello.
4. Adopt a zero-trust security framework.
In an ideal world, you can let employees, investors, and clients access a library of open files. This makes it easier for all parties and also implies your trust. Unfortunately, this ideal setup can cause significant damage to your company. Aside from malicious attackers attempting to access your networks, it also risks your internal teams making errors in navigating valuable data. Additionally, it makes confidentiality difficult to ascertain.
While it’s vital to trust your hybrid workforce, human error is still a factor for both small and large companies. One example is Amazon’s outage in 2017. An employee authorized to access their AWS systems entered the wrong command.¹ If this happened with an authorized employee, imagine what unauthorized personnel could do!
It’s natural to make mistakes, so it’s always best to ensure security by verifying access. A zero-trust policy seeks verification every time a user accesses your network.
Implementing this strategy strengthens your cybersecurity measures by:
- Increasing defense against cyber threats
- Bridging security gaps
- Ensuring authorized access to sensitive information
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5. Centralize data management with secure cloud storage solutions.
Paper and ink are a thing of the past. However, simply shifting physical documents to digital storage may not fully support your hybrid workers. Instead, improve employee experience by using centralized storage solutions like the cloud. The cloud allows your employees to access, manage, and share their files wherever they are.
Another key benefit of cloud storage is that it reduces the need to protect every file on different devices. When implementing the cloud, it’s necessary to protect your data using robust cybersecurity products.
As a best practice, implement these tools when using the cloud:
Identification and Access Management Tools
Use tools like Okta, Microsoft Azure AD, or Google Workspace IAM to limit access to specific resources to authorized users.
Encryption Tools
Use end-to-end encryption tools to safeguard sensitive data while being transferred and stored.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Tools
Implement tools like Symantec DLP or McAfee DLP to prevent sensitive information from being unintentionally shared.
Firewalls and Detection Systems
Deploy cloud firewalls like AWS WAF or Azure WAF to monitor and block suspicious activities.
Backup Solutions
Back up your critical data to prevent loss in case of cyberattacks or system failures.
6. Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Multi-factor authentication can be tedious to do. However, it significantly strengthens security and data protection.
Multi-factor authentication is a simple yet powerful tool that enhances security by having you provide two or more verification factors to access a system or account.
A hacker may have an employee’s password, but no access to their mobile numbers or email. This ensures that accessing an account without authentication tools will be nearly impossible.
MFA works in multiple ways by using verifying credentials through:
- Something you know: Passwords or PIN.
- Something you have: Physical devices like a phone, laptop, or keyfob.
- Something you are: Biological data through fingerprints or face scans.
7. Train your team to recognize phishing and email scams.
According to Infosec Institute, 74 percent of data breaches are caused by human errors, such as clicking a phishing link.2 It’s vital to educate your employees about the risks of opening unsecured websites from unfamiliar sources. It’s also important to include these safety protocols in your work policy to ensure compliance.
As you implement more hybrid work setups, it’s imperative to have your employees apply best practices when working in the digital space. Here are some ways to do this:
- Help employees recognize trusted versus fraudulent email addresses. These could be from internal employees, vendors, advertisements, and others.
- Maintain communications in secured channels.
- Teach your employees about the cybersecurity measures in place and their purposes.
- Create a reporting system where employees can submit suspicious emails and websites for tracking and monitoring.
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Fill your virtual meeting spaces with the right teams.
The best tech essentials for hybrid work can only be fully leveraged by skilled and dependable professionals. To build a secure and efficient virtual workspace, partner with leading staffing agencies like Madison-Davis.
We specialize in providing top-tier search services to connect you with the talent needed to ensure your team’s success in a hybrid environment. Partner with us today and gain access to more than 40 years of staffing expertise.
References
- Sverdlik, Yevgeniy. “AWS Outage that Broke the Internet Caused by Mistyped Command.” Data Center knowledge, 3 Mar. 2017, https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/outages/aws-outage-that-broke-the-internet-caused-by-mistyped-command
- Peters, Jeff. “Human error is responsible for 74% of data breaches.” Infosec Institute, 30 Nov. 2023, https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/security-awareness/human-error-responsible-data-breaches/
