The past three years have driven a mindset shift around how work can be done. Despite the gradual return to the office for many in South Africa, we’re still in the midst of a remote working revolution.
By Mandy Duncan, HPE Aruba Networking country manager South Africa
A recent survey shows that less than half of the country’s employees have returned to the office full-time. And Gartner predicts that by the end of 2023, 39% of workers globally will be hybrid – up from 37% in 2022.
However, while the future of work may look hybrid and here to stay, there is growing concern amongst employers that this new way of working is making it difficult for employees to optimise their time – often as a result of limitations in the existing digital infrastructure.
Indeed, a recent report from Deloitte rated just 6% of South African organisations as excellent at creating a positive employee experience, with the average knowledge worker encountering three to four digital endpoint issues each day.
These challenges are being compounded by a sense that an employee working remotely introduces new paths for security breaches. This is because dispersed locations and distance workers open businesses up to a number of security risks relating to where, when, and how employees choose to access IT resources.
In response to these new demands for flexibility and accessibility, network architectures, which incorporate everything from data centres to the cloud and the emerging edge, need to take a different approach to cyber security.
Here are three ways that businesses can make sure their networks deliver protection in an unobtrusive way – increasing productivity by removing traditional security roadblocks while facilitating seamless IT access.
Improving network performance with an edge-to-cloud security approach
In the age of hybrid working, enterprise networks are evolving. Once upon a time they used to be built from the data centre out, aligning with strong perimeters and ensuring that once a user was connected inside that perimeter, applications and user data were protected within it.
Of course, when organisations hosted most business applications in their own data centres, this model of centralised security control points was acceptable. Now, as more and more applications have moved into the cloud, there is the opportunity to reduce latency with a distributed security model.
With users and applications everywhere in 2023, businesses can extend their in-office security controls to accommodate the new cloud environment. By deploying an advanced SD-WAN along with SSE (Secure Security Edge) security solutions, IT can enhance end-user quality of experience by automatically steering traffic to the internet based on a business’s specific objectives while ensuring that those transactions are subject to the same security policies that they would encounter in the office.
In practice, this means that, for example, end user traffic that originates at home can be sent to a cloud-delivered security service to ensure that access policies are enforced while employees can still enjoy seamless connectivity without unnecessary overhead. The end result – greatly improved network performance that increases productivity.
Ensuring safe connections from anywhere with Zero Trust and SASE
Security teams know that their strategies and solutions must keep pace with the realities of hybrid work, but a piecemeal approach will likely not reach the desired goal of a defining and implementing unified security policies.
There are number of frameworks that can guide security strategies and investment, with two complementary approaches being Zero Trust and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). The key principle of Zero Trust is “trust nothing” – based on the concept that trust is independent of how you connect to IT assets. It requires any user or device (including IoT) to be authenticated and assigned an access policy that governs where they can go and what applications and data can be accessed.
SASE then extends this framework by enforcing Zero Trust principles even if the user never enters the corporate network by connecting via the Internet to cloud-based applications. Whether an employee is in the office, or connecting through their personal iPhone via a café’s public WiFi – they can ensure their connection is safe. Here, utilising Zero Trust and SASE Security models is the only way to effectively streamline security operations while accommodating the “work anywhere” principles of hybrid work.
Enhancing visibility with a unified network and single-pane-of-glass controls
Finally, good security also relies on controls that can be applied universally to wired, wireless and WAN connectivity, with a single point of visibility and control.
The tendency for workers to disperse across home offices and cafes has meant that connectivity stretches from the edge to the cloud, resulting in IT teams having to deal with a wider range of devices to monitor – broadening blind spots that can lead to compromise. Without common security policies and a single point of visibility and control, operators are pushed to manually collate data from various disjointed tools. And fear of this has led some to try and lock down employees instead.
Going forward, businesses must look towards technologies that can address fragmented network operations while applying a consistent set of Zero Trust and SASE policies. Deploying a unified infrastructure, one that can be centrally managed via a cloud-native single point of control, can give businesses stronger supervision over their networks and increased protection.
The path forward
Striking the balance between a flexible but secure network and IT access will allow South African businesses to provide their employees with the flexibility and accessibility they now seek, without compromising on security.