Enabling Seamless and Secure Network Access for your Hybrid Workforce

How IT/ITeS companies can identify and address their network blind spots to maximize productivity of a hybrid workforce

Hybrid work environments are common across most organizations, though the percentage of remote workforce varies drastically across industries. While sectors like manufacturing discontinued remote working altogether, others like IT/ITeS companies enabled it for most of their workforce. Traditional network architectures are not geared to handle such hybrid work environments as they were not designed for remote working. IT leaders in IT/ITeS companies must understand this change and identify the potential blind spots on their networks in order to facilitate secure and seamless access for their hybrid workforce. For this, they must seriously consider deploying modern network architectures like SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). We spoke to Ranganath Sadasiva, CTO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, to understand what are some of these potential blind spots on the network and how to plug them. 

Understand Your Current Hybrid Work Environment

Before re-architecting the network for a hybrid work environment, it’s important to understand the degree of change that the pandemic has brought to your workplace. “The workplace underwent a significant transformation with changes in work timings, work culture and devices to name a few. All these required restructuring frameworks to maintain productivity”, said Ranganath. Once you’re aware of the changes, you must map the nature of the work of different employees against their data security and performance requirements. “Technology plays a crucial role in managing this change”, he added. 

Identify Crucial Blind Spots in the Legacy Infrastructure

Besides mapping organizational changes and workforce requirements, IT leaders must identify the blind spots that plague their legacy infrastructure. “Crucial blind spots in a hybrid work environment include employee well-being, communication, data security, and career development. Reliable connectivity and collaboration are key areas where challenges may arise”, said Ranganath. 

Define the Desired Future State

Only once you know the exact blind spots can you work out the desired future state of your legacy infrastructure that addresses them. “I feel that the desired future state should involve promoting work-life balance, enhancing communication tools, ensuring data privacy, and providing virtual career growth opportunities”, added Sadasiva. Ranganath feels that developing a connected remote working paradigm, especially for manufacturing and IT-ITeS segments is crucial. While the IT & ITeS sector already has interconnected and manageable systems to some extent, he feels that further development is needed.

Regarding security, Ranganath feels that ensuring agility and robustness in the security system is a significant challenge. “It should accommodate multiple devices, networks, and people while safeguarding privacy for employees, employers, and organizations”, he added. 

Enable Legacy Applications for Remote Access

As IT/ITeS companies re-architect their network for their hybrid workforce, they must proactively anticipate the security and agility challenges that lie ahead. From enabling and securing remote access to protecting sensitive data to ensuring network agility in the face of evolving demands, they must factor in and be prepared for all these challenges to maximize workforce productivity.

Ranganath emphasized the need to have SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) for corporate applications to enable seamless access with reduced latency to meet the demands of remote workers. He also highlighted the importance of redefining corporate VPNs and enhancing "access space control" for improved security. As hybrid work becomes more prevalent, developing a reliable interconnected framework becomes crucial to ensuring security, connectivity, manageability, and collaboration.

Optimize Network Performance for the Edge

Audio/Video based collaboration tools have become as common as email for most enterprises. In order to optimize audio-video access without lag on the network EDGE, enterprises should deploy SASE technologies. These can provide advanced capabilities like edge caching, adaptive bitrate streaming, QoS prioritization, traffic optimization, and intelligent network optimization algorithms. These can help reduce latency and enhance user experience, even on networks with limited resources.

Ranganath said “The significance of audio-video connectivity tools has greatly increased. For that, it’s high time for organizations to enhance their network infrastructure and overcome bandwidth limitations.” He suggested that organizations can leverage existing market tools or develop custom solutions to curate a smooth audio-video collaboration platform. Network optimization is crucial for organizations to ensure a seamless audio-video experience in the current environment.

Addressing Security Challenges in a Hybrid Work Environment

When it comes to hybrid working, the key security-related challenges include being able to securely manage multiple devices and incoming requests without compromising performance. Ranganath suggests that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for security, but constant activity is essential. End-point security and a centralized collaboration platform like VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) can be fruitful solutions. A constant monitoring system and a culture of security awareness among employees are also crucial. Some key security concerns to address include providing secure access, data protection, network security, user behaviour monitoring, and compliance. 

SASE Solutions can Help

Gaining insight and control over the entire workflow to improve communication, enhance user experience, and strengthen security is very important in a hybrid environment. According to reports, SASE has gained attention for its integrated approach to security and network connectivity. While it holds potential for addressing modern workplace challenges, its effectiveness may vary based on individual organizational needs. 

SASE solutions can address all remote workforce connectivity challenges through integrated security measures, including identity verification, encryption, unified security functions, user behavior analytics, and centralized policy enforcement.

“SASE is indeed a crucial technology in the current situation, particularly for end-point security. But for all these, developing a reliable system is just the first step and constant evaluation is necessary to ensure ongoing reliability.”, said Ranganath. He also feels that “factors like scalability, implementation complexities, cost, and integration with existing systems should be carefully considered before adopting SASE or any technology solution”. 

Future Of Hybrid Workspace 

In the near future, SASE solutions are going to see increased adoption as they are the key to addressing most potential blind spots on the network. They help optimize application performance, enable legacy applications for remote access, and address all security relate concerns. This will result in further development of offerings, advancements in technology and innovation, collaboration on industry standards, improved user experience, and an expanded ecosystem. These expectations arise from the rising demand for secure and agile network solutions in remote and hybrid work environments.

Talking about this Ranganath feels, "I anticipate future SASE solutions to deliver robust security solutions, seamless access, and unified connectivity. Additionally, agility is essential to enable systems and organizations to adapt to future changes.”

The article has been written by Sayan Dey, Manager-Research, CMR