Managing HR And Finance Security in the Hybrid Work Environment
Laurie Fainer, Director, People, Culture & Values
January 25, 2022
The Human Resources Management software market is growing rapidly. Analysts estimate the size of this market to be valued at over (USD) $11 billion by 2023. The growth from 2018 to 2023 is estimated to be 14% CAGR. This is ongoing and consistent growth and applies across many industries – naturally, every company needs HR.
But these numbers may even underestimate the changes taking place in HR systems. The Covid pandemic created an immediate need for companies to build resilient and flexible architecture that allows employees to access information from their home or office. Many office-based employees are still working from home and some have found that their employer is now embracing a hybrid approach to work location.
If you are now offering a hybrid solution, then how are your employees continuing to work securely from home? There was a rush to facilitate this for all office-based employees back when the pandemic started, but there is now a need to review security arrangements. The emergency response is not good enough as a long-term solution.
It’s also not just about remote access for IT workers – your HR team is analyzing important data on salaries and performance and therefore you need a guarantee that if these employees are now hybrid, have you secured all that information adequately?
Hackers will often use techniques that are not high-tech at all. Social engineering can be as simple as someone calling IT support and asking for a password reset for a user in the HR department. If you don’t have two-factor security and other authorization measures in place, then support requests can easily lead to hackers breaking in through the front door.
Cybersecurity is a real threat in the modern work environment. This applies across several areas beyond just a direct cyberattack on your corporate network. IT professionals are now trying to find better solutions to all these issues:
- Hackers exploiting remote workers through ransomware or malware attacks
- Employees accessing sensitive information from their home Wi-Fi networks and personal devices
- Workers becoming frustrated with multiple passwords and security friction
- Keeping up with the latest technology and evolving cybersecurity risks
Every management advisor from Deloitte to McKinsey is suggesting that we are now going to see remote hybrid work as normal. Many office-based employees are now expecting this as a standard feature of their employment contract – it’s the kind of flexibility that people wanted for years and was only normalized by the pandemic.
Data from LinkedIn has suggested that around 4 in every 5 office-based workers now believe that this location flexibility is essential. Smart employers will be creating formal policies around flexibility and using this as a tool to attract the best new talent. Just imagine trying to attract the best people now if your job description suggests that five days a week in the same office is essential.
Teams like finance and HR need access to extremely sensitive information to perform their roles. This means that a new approach to security is essential. Companies need to think carefully about accessibility, security, and the experience employees have when working flexibly between the office and home.
The WatServ Secure Workspace solution creates a safe and reliable virtual workspace for employees and works in both the home and office environment – or both. Check out the information here for more ideas on how to manage collaboration, identify access control, and endpoint security in the new hybrid normal.
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WatServ is an IT solutions provider that helps organizations digitally transform through cloud technologies and managed services.
Serving clients as a trusted advisor since 2006, WatServ provides experience-tested, strategic solutions across all stages of the digital transformation journey. Clients choose WatServ to migrate infrastructure and applications to the cloud, secure critical data, implement disaster recovery, deploy virtual desktop, enable data-readiness for productivity solutions and manage IT environments.
Our clients span a broad range of industries, and we’re a global supplier of IT services for many Brookfield Portfolio Companies. To help our mid-size clients, we provide scalable offerings that simplify cloud adoption and drive business optimization. For enterprise clients, we co-create cloud solutions that enable stability and efficiency for complex IT tools and processes.
With more than 15 years of experience, WatServ has a track record of delivering quantifiable business results and a superior client experience. Ranked as one of Canada’s Top 100 Solution Providers for the last three years in a row, WatServ is always on.
