Over the last few weeks, most organisations have had to transition to enable their employees to work remotely. The key focus has been on business continuity during this trying time. Unfortunately, business continuity isn’t so easy. Keeping the day-to-day operations of the business running has been one of the hardest IT challenges that most organisations have faced in the last decade. It’s one for which many organisations might not have had a plan in place.

We are entering a very different business world at the moment, one which has been thrust upon most of us far quicker than we planned for and will by all accounts last a lot longer than many of us think.

With a majority of the workforce now adopting a work-from-home routine, maintaining the normal functioning of your network and ensuring compliance with industry standards is not an easy job. When employees are working remotely, it is especially crucial to ensure network compliance with industry standards and internal policies to secure your network from cybersecurity breaches.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force employees to work from home, businesses are facing new and unique challenges to ensure business continuity. When remote work is mandated due to COVID-19, the transition isn’t smooth for many businesses; not every business has the infrastructure to make the abrupt shift, even given the immediate need to go remote.

In the new normal, if your business has chosen remote operations, this might attract malicious actors. Hackers prey on the remote workforce whose vulnerability has increased in multifold ways. While infrastructural concerns, such as working outside the corporate IT network and using home Wi-Fi are inevitable, other issues, including using personal devices and retaining privileges to access more than required business resources add to the magnitude of this vulnerability.

If, like many organisations, your business has been forced to support mass employee remote working, it’s likely that you’ve also had to roll out new services and applications to maintain business continuity and productivity. Understandably, cyber security may not have been front of mind during this process.

In recent years, many businesses had already begun planning for a gradual shift towards an increasingly remote workforce, yet fewer had implemented a mobile-first strategy, and some were still formulating strategies. At a gradual pace, IT administrators could handle a small percentage of remote workers and saw the management features of device enrollment programs and network security measures as enough to manage a few remote devices and cyber risks.

According to the Pew Research Center, last year, roughly seven percent of U.S. workers regularly enjoyed the option of working from home. Well accustomed to the nature of remote work, these individuals were equipped with stable internet connections, collaboration and communication tools, and security technologies that helped them excel from their home offices.

From global pioneers to budding startups, almost every organization around the globe has adopted a mandatory work-from-home routine due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This shift has brought up numerous questions for decision-makers: How are we going to pull this off? Is work-from-home strategy feasible? Is our network security going to be compromised? Is BYOD the solution?

Companies around the globe scrambled to make work life productive for their employees once health and government mandates instructed offices to close. While the Internet became awash in work from home advice for employees, it was the IT admins who had to quickly enable their workforces to be productive, secure, and fully equipped to mimic the office environment at their kitchen table.