Set your IT strategy for post Covid-19 recovery

“Time to tighten up the Security holes created during Crisis mode” 

The serious and devastating impacts of COVID-19 to Australia’s economy, companies, and their staff is very real and the way we now work has evolved due to these impacts. 

As Australia lifts progressively it’s COVID-19 restrictions, businesses of all sizes, across all sectors are now reviewing their strategies for returning to work, planning for the recovery in the months and years ahead, and looking to change ways of working to take advantage of the lessons learnt from enforced working from home. 

It’s now critical to prioritise and review how the significant impacts of COVID-19 affected your staff, business partners, customers and suppliers and what these lessons learnt are from what we have experienced, and to also take stock of any opportunities that may have arisen on how to do things differently” said, Enablis CEO, Jon Evans. 

Since March many businesses have moved part or the majority of their workforce to work remotely from home. For the first time in decades Australia has seen major changes in the way businesses work remotely and communicate while working from home. There have been massive uptakes in collaboration tools like – MS Teams for online meetings, video conferences, voice calling and chat messaging. 

Changes to the way we work has impacted our IT teams  

Current organisational security and continuity plans have been tested to the limits and are under strain as a result of our workforces moving to work from home.  

We have seen some businesses exposed through security hacks and breaches within Australia as they did not have the right security framework in place for remote workers – in particular the right password security, firewalls, and cloud security with ironclad email security protection. 

This remote working, at scale, in the home environment has bought extra pressure and stress to IT teams, with new security scenarios at play and extra technology support requirements for the home worker.  

For some businesses it’s clear that more robust and secure security frameworks and policies are required to ensure data and applications are secure from any location. 

Enablis has been working closely with Australian organisations during this time to prepare and respond to the challenges presented by COVID-19, across key industries including; Manufacturing & Distribution, Healthcare, Insurance, Finance, Not for Profit and Professional services. 

During this period our technology experts have supported IT teams to ensure networks and home workers are secure, given the current increases in security exposure both in Australia and globally. 

“We have seen and been involved in moving whole call centre teams to work from home in a secure environment, where staff where able to seamlessly receive and make calls from their homes to ensure the business was able to still run and service their clients.” 

“COVID-19 has inadvertently forced the acceleration of many Digital transformation initiatives – particularly around workforce flexibility, which is a real positive of this whole crisis. What has not been accelerated however is the strategic and critical need to secure and protect users and access to Corporate data and applications when working from home – and this needs to be a major focus of Corporate post COVID tidy up” says Jon Evans CEO 

The road map for the next few months and years ahead 

As discussed in a recent ComputerWorld article – “business execs are going to find themselves running very different companies in very different ways. And the vast majority of the burden to deliver the infrastructure for these new operations will fall to IT.”  

Given the critical importance of company infrastructures and security, IT executives are integral in working with business leaders and their department heads to work through the lessons learned over the past few months to develop the future strategies required for contingency planning if another outbreak occurs, ensuring the success of the businesses in the short and long term and safely pivoting to new ways of working. 

As leaders evaluate changes in work from home policies post COVID-19 – it is predicted that working from home and telecommuting will rise when compared to pre COVID-19 statistics. Businesses of all sizes will need to adapt to these changes and ensure all company data and applications are 100% secure. 

Now is the time for your business to plan, strategise and develop a road map for what your next steps are to get your business up and running again as effectively as you can for future success. 

If you would like to speak with one of the Enablis team about your security, network or collaboration strategy click here or call ph: 02-8272 4000 or 03-8199 4100.