Frictionless access for hybrid working

Irrespective of where they are working, the employee experience needs to be a good one, argues Denis Dorval at JumpCloud

 

A percentage of the workforce has always worked from home. But working from home really took off during the COVID pandemic. According to the UK Office of National Statistics, between October to December 2019 and January to March 2022, home working in the UK more than doubled from 4.7 million to 9.9 million people.

 

Today, according to the latest Chartered Institute of Personal Development (CIPD) report on flexible-hybrid working practices, 83% of organisations have a hybrid working model in place. 45% of organisations have a formal policy, while 24% take an informal approach, and 13% are developing policies through learning and trials. 

 

Overall, the number of people working from home, at least some of the time, has grown from 17% to 25% since March 2020, meaning a quarter of UK professionals are hybrid workers.

 

Where work gets done

Hybrid work can take place in all sorts of environments, in coffee shops, co-working locations, libraries, restaurants, to name several. However, as the hybrid working landscape continues to expand, so do security and compliance risks.

 

During the early parts of the pandemic, organisations and IT admins responsible for securing the environment struggled with how to enable remote employees and support new workplace models while maintaining robust security. The transition wasn’t easy, but it accelerated cloud transformation and IT teams were well served by adopting cloud-forward models that accommodated the sudden redistribution of workers and their resources.

 

A new workplace normal

Now, our recent SME IT Trends research shows that, after SMEs successfully established the new workplace normal, significant turbulence in the greater macroeconomic environment threatens to upend their systems again. Instead of lockdowns and supply chain shortages, businesses are now dealing with cost-of-living issues and an economic slowdown.

 

This, combined with growing hybrid workforce needs means that flexibility, ingenuity, and innovation have never been more critical for those in the IT trenches.

 

Uncertainty around the modern workplace model has largely settled as SMEs have adjusted to distributed workforces. Our survey showed that nearly half of workers (47%) have returned to the office, with 33% working in a hybrid model and 20% still working completely remotely.

 

However, regardless of where employees are working, IT admins have been keen to ensure that the employee experience is a good one, no matter where they are, or what applications they’re using to do their job. 84% agree that employee experience is an important factor to take into consideration when making IT purchasing decisions and this includes ensuring the working set up is fast and secure.

 

Growing compliance requirements

We also found that with employees logging in across distributed workplaces, SMEs are keeping aware and active about compliance needs, whether due to increased governmental regulation or the proliferation of new applications and tools.

 

Nearly half of IT admins (45%) surveyed are concerned about meeting government compliance IT requirements, and a large majority (69%) believe their existing IT investments and systems are effective or extremely effective in meeting regulatory and compliance laws.

 

The good news is that with workers logging in from around the globe, IT admins can breathe a little easier when it comes to employee education around security practices. With the complex makeup of remote, in-office, and hybrid employees, our research showed that 73% agree or strongly agree that remote workers are better at following best security practices than they were a year ago. 

 

But despite employee awareness around issues, SMEs may still be placing too heavy of a security burden on employees. When surveyed about specific approaches to employee IT access, 12% leave accounts entirely unmanaged by IT, with security practices like multi-factor authentication (MFA) encouraged but not enforced. Just 31% of accounts are fully centrally managed with permissions and security measures controlled by IT at all times.

 

Reducing friction through a single pane of glass

Part of the challenge in managing modern hybrid workforces is ensuring worker ease, productivity, and security without introducing unnecessary friction. Six in ten IT professionals agree that additional security measures generally mean a more cumbersome experience. 

 

One popular approach SME IT admins are leveraging to reduce such friction while increasing security is single sign-on (SSO). Nearly nine in 10 SMEs (88%) have deployed SSO for at least some apps in their IT stack, and 36% have deployed it across the entire organisation.

 

Additionally, as remote and hybrid work become the new norm, companies are eagerly seeking smarter, more secure alternatives to traditional virtual private networks (VPNs) for accessing corporate resources. This is where tools such as AWS Verified Access, a VPN-less solution to resource access, can really help.

 

AWS Verified Access provides secure access to corporate applications without the need for a VPN. Verified Access continuously evaluates each access request in real-time, using contextual security signals such as identity, device security status, and location.

 

By granting users the correct access based on the configured security policy for each application, Verified Access significantly improves the security posture of the organisation while also improving user experience by enabling users to access corporate applications without a VPN. 

 

It is also the only solution that offers device management for Macs and Windows devices, using one platform in the same tool, enabling SMEs to increase their security and manage users and devices in a single pane of glass.

 

Recently, the UK Government’s proposal to make the right to request flexible working from day one, rather than after 26 weeks of employment, is likely to further escalate the amount of flexible working requests and likewise the number of employees working remotely.

 

Ensuring frictionless access while keeping company data protected and ensuring compliance is the balancing act facing UK SMEs as we look ahead to 2024.

 

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Denis Dorval is Vice President, International EMEA & APAC at JumpCloud

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com