Why Every Business Needs Cyber Insurance

Today every business faces the possibility of being compromised by cyberattacks, such as from hacking, extortion, data breach, phishing scams and others. Especially with work from home becoming so widespread due to the pandemic, businesses are more exposed than ever before.

In the event of an attack, a business must bear the cost of restoring its systems, compensating those whose data has been compromised, paying fines and providing remedial services. The possibility of being sued by individuals and stakeholders cannot be ruled out either.

This article explains the basics of insurance for cyber threats and why every business needs it. To learn more, speak to the IT consulting services team at NUMENTIS.

What Are Cyber Insurance Policies?

Dedicated cyber insurance policies are designed for the unique risks associated with cyberattack. General policies cover businesses for common attacks while comprehensive policies cover specific cybercrimes and particularly sensitive information. An insurance policy doesn’t just provide coverage for business loss, but also the costs associated with data breach disclosures and remedial steps. Optionally, policies can also provide for detailed incident response.

Why Every Business Should Insure Against Cyberattack

Insurance coverage for cyberattacks can compensate/cover:

• Data and security breach remediation and notification expenses
• Monitoring services and recordkeeping
• Costs of complying with disclosure requirements under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
• Public relations expenses to manage damage to the business’s reputation
• Data breach forensic investigation
• Computer program and electronic data restoration expenses
• Extortion payments
• Business interruption for income the business may lose due to an interruption in services
• Subrogation in the event of a lawsuit

Insurance coverage for cyber risks is a new and rapidly evolving field. Insurance companies are continually updating and improving insurance products to meet new types of threats and regulatory compliance.

In the event of cyberattack, an insurance company will assess the breach and damage to determine if the policy is triggered. Policies include exclusions too, so not every breach will be covered. For example, if an employee is defrauded by an imposter into transferring company funds into a fake bank account, that may not be covered by the insurance policy.

Make sure the specific threats your business faces are covered by the policy. Speak to IT professional services before signing a policy.

Disclosure Requirements Under PIPEDA

In Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), 2018, requires businesses to disclose data breaches if certain conditions are met. Under the Act, breaches involving personal information ‘that pose a real risk of significant harm to individuals’ must be disclosed to law enforcement.

There is a significant regulatory cost associated with this; businesses may also have to pay regulatory fines and provide internet monitoring and remedial services to those who have been affected. Insurance can insulate a business from many of these costs.

Discuss Insurance with IT Consulting Services in Oakville

Insurance for cyber threats requires the business to comply with industry standards, network security, disaster planning and other requirements. Talk to our IT professional services team in Oakville about the preparation required before getting cyber insurance.

Source: https://numentis.com/every-business-needs-cyber-insurance/

What Is the Cost of a Cyberattack?

While this article will look at the cost – your loss as a business from a cyberattack – we will start by asking how much does it cost a cybercriminal to mount an attack? According to Deloitte, a cyberattack can be launched for as little as $34 and yield returns up to $25,000. More sophisticated attacks can cost nearly $4,000 and net returns in the millions.

The real cost of cybercrime is borne by the business or individual that suffers it. Keep reading to understand the monetary consequences of becoming victim to cybercrime and what the best cyberattack protections for your company are.

Calculating the Cost of a Cyberattack

To calculate how much a cyberattack could cost you, consider losses/cost of remediation under each of the heads below:

• Data and security breach remediation and notification expenses
• Monitoring services and recordkeeping
• Complying with disclosure requirements under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
• Public relations expenses to manage damage to the business’s reputation
• Data breach forensic investigation
• Computer program and electronic data restoration expenses
• Extortion payments
• Business interruption for income the business may lose due to an interruption in services

What is the Cost of a Cyberattack

Accenture released some of the most damning figures on the cost to business per cyberattack.

$13 million – cost of cybercrime

$4 million – cost of business disruption

$5.9 million – cost of information loss

For small and mid-sized businesses that kind of loss can affect the integrity of the business itself; reputational harm can drastically lower its survivability from an attack. It is why active IT support in Toronto is vitally important to address security breaches as soon as possible.

Changing Nature of Cyberattack

Just as the nature of business has changed so has the nature of attacks. The types and means of attack have changed to adapt to the changing nature of the target and the effectiveness of the attack. Cyberattack protections have evolved similarly.

Where direct profit was the motive in the late ‘90s and ‘00s, information has become the primary target today. It’s why attacks now focus on information theft, manipulation, and hijacking. Just look at ‘ransomware’ and ‘cryptojacking’, two of the fastest-growing cybercrimes in the world, notorious for their high rate of success (businesses choose to pay because of a fear of loss of information).

But “people-based attacks have increased the most”, reports Accenture, as social engineering yields some of the highest success rates. As our IT support in Toronto puts it succinctly, “It is easier to ask for a password than hack it”.  The global trend of remote work (work from home) has made socially engineered attacks targeting employees more effective. Reduced internal communication and greater reliance on electronic requests make targets more likely to trust a fraudulent email or caller.

Dynamic IT Solutions in Toronto for Evolving Cyberattack Protections

NUMENTIS designs IT solutions in Toronto with security in mind. We ensure our clients meet industry standards for security and comply with security best practices. Speak to a representative to find out how we can help you secure your business.

Source: https://numentis.com/what-is-the-cost-of-a-cyberattack/

How to Keep Your Business Up to Date with Ever-Changing Operational Technologies

Technology is changing at a frantic pace and organizations face a crunch trying to keep up with cycles of new operational technologies. The plethora of platforms, cloud computing, AI and IoT integration create a situation of competing priorities. How does a business react to that? Should it allocate an increasingly larger slice of the budget for IT adoption? According to ZDNET, 82% of the IT budget is already consumed maintaining existing systems.

Most businesses in Mississauga are unable to respond to the evolution of IT because their resources are so heavily tied up in legacy systems. Continue reading to find out how a managed IT services provider (MSP) helps organizations stay up to date with the tide of new technologies.

Is your business ready for long-term remote work? Find out how NUMENTIS is helping start-up, small, and mid-sized businesses transition to the ‘new normal’.

Why Organizations Need to Stay on Top of the Technology Curve

• Not falling into the legacy systems spiral
• Better operations streamlining
• Improved customer service
• Maintain advantage over competition
• Cost savings

Benefits of Working with a Managed IT Services Provider

Relying on managed IT services for small businesses has many benefits. In addition to helping incorporate new systems, having an MSP onboard allows the business owner to focus on the core business. An IT consulting & services company can also provide market intelligence – something that is simply not available in-house. For keeping up with the ever-changing tech, here is how a managed IT services for small business can help.

Free up capacity – With some or all IT tasks offloaded to an MSP the organization frees up bandwidth to expand its IT horizons.

Forward planning – The MSP is aware of the direction technology is heading and can chart out a technology roadmap.

Remove barriers to change – Building buy-in and overcoming resistance to change are some of the biggest hurdles an MSP can reduce/remove through knowledge sharing.

Expert team – A qualified, certified, and experienced team makes transitions a lot smoother and reduces the potential for downtime enormously.

Risk reduced – Failure is a huge risk when new technologies are incorporated in-house because there simply isn’t the knowledge base or expertise to troubleshoot every problem.

Predictable budgets – With contract-based IT implementation, organizations are able to plan budgets far in advance.

Economies of scale – Businesses reap the benefits of savings in hardware, software and license procurement.

Scalable infrastructure – MSPs have the ability and capacity to scale up the IT infrastructure as internal demand rises.

Rapid deployment – With a team of engineers working onsite and offsite, technologies are deployed far more rapidly than if an understaffed in-house IT team was to do it.

Security and compliance – The MSP’s team will be certified to install and maintain systems in accordance with industry security standards and compliance requirements in contracts.

Find the Right Managed IT Services Provider in Mississauga

How do you find the right MSP? Consider an MSP with a strong reputation, a track record of innovation, and one that offers complete IT consulting & services. At NUMENTIS we are committed to empowering your organization with the latest operational technologies, analytics and business intelligence. Speak to a representative about or flexible SLAs and our exceptional customer support.

Source: https://numentis.com/keep-business-date-ever-changing-operational-technologies/

4 Key Trends Influencing the Trajectory of Technology

As the COVID pandemic stretches on, businesses are shifting from short-term reactions to longer-term strategy. As much as people have talked about this being the “new normal,” the general attitude has actually NOT been to view this time period as permanent. Instead, people act as though it is temporary. While parts of our current environment will certainly change, the trajectory of technology is something that businesses should be considering today.

In some ways, this new trajectory is similar to the path we were on before the pandemic. Many people have made the observation that several trends have accelerated over the past several months, so these key trends should look familiar. What’s changed is the priority of each topic and the way they are now being combined to support operations. When considering budget and skills for the year to come, these are the areas that IT leaders should be focused on.

Cloud Computing

The exact shape of the hype cycle for cloud computing over the past ten years is not clear, but it seems like it’s had more ups and downs than the average trend. For a long time, people were divided on how impactful or innovative cloud computing was. Then as adoption ramped up, many companies focused on migrating existing operations rather than reconfiguring new operations to leverage cloud strengths. While the topic may suffer from fatigue, there has been renewed interest in cloud solutions as the foundation for a flexible and resilient IT architecture. Businesses are not just exploring new cloud options, they are also investing more in the hard work of restructuring workflow, which leads into the next two trends.

Integration

On the surface, integration hardly even seems like a trend. It’s simply something that gets done in order to make all the pieces work. But that’s exactly the shift that’s taking place—rather than integration being an afterthought, it is gaining critical importance as a company’s digital footprint is expanding. Businesses are building multi-cloud architectures and digitizing more processes than ever before, which leads to a wide array of solutions from a wide array of vendors. Without prioritizing integration, this variety of tools will actually have a negative effect on productivity. The skills needed for integration include not only the technical know-how for tying everything together but also the behavioral knowledge needed to create efficient workflow.

Automation

The ultimate goal for efficient workflow is automation. After all the pieces have been connected, there is the potential to automate routine process steps and allow the workforce to focus on more innovative tasks. Like integration, automation has been around for a long time. However, the current tools for automation are dramatically different than they were even a few years ago. Using cloud systems as a foundation opens the doors for tools tied to cloud platforms. Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation offer tremendous power to IT professionals. And smart contracts of the future may use blockchain to further drive automated procedures. Automation is not a single product or project; it’s the combination of several technologies and disciplines.

Workforce enablement

One of the common themes from the first weeks of the pandemic was businesses realizing that a remote workforce could get the job done (assuming they had the proper tools for working). As time has passed, the situation has become more complicated. From a technical perspective, there are few hurdles in the way of most employees getting their work done. But working in isolation takes a toll, and collaborating over video calls isn’t the same as collaborating in person. There is certainly a cultural element to this, as managers need to be even more in tune with the preferences and mental well-being of their employees. Then the technology has to support the culture of the organization while also evolving to address the needs of a mostly remote workforce.

This technology trajectory is happening today, and the businesses that capitalize on these trends will be more prepared for whatever the future may hold.

Remote Access Solutions in Toronto

NUMENTIS helps organizations prepare and configure their operations for remote access and WFH. Our IT solutions team in Toronto also monitors networks and devices in real time to minimize the risk of cybertattack. Call us today to find out how we can help you resolve the little problems that reduce your employees’ productivity.

Source: https://numentis.com/4-key-trends-influencing-trajectory-technology/

10 Things to Remember When Reopening Your Office After COVID-19

COVID-19 isn’t over—hardly—but across the U.S., increasing numbers of communities are planning to or starting to relax restrictions that will enable more businesses to open and allow employees to head back to the office—many for the first time in several months.

For tech companies, that may mean big changes—again. Just as many had found their footing in a remote work world, some businesses are looking for the right balance between the pre-coronavirus days and what the workplace should look like going forward.

In a recent survey of CompTIA communities and Industry Advisory Councils members, 94% of respondents said their business will change in at least one way over the long-term, including:

65% will let more employees stay working remotely
48% plan more social/digital marketing vs. traditional marketing
47% see less business travel permanently
28% are broadening their offerings
27% plan to downsize physical office space
24% are investing more in tech training/certifications

As this all happens, there’s likely to be new safety and security protocols, mandates, and guidelines—all of which could have a big impact on how business is conducted going forward. We asked several members of CompTIA’s communities and Industry Advisory Councils that have reopened their offices or plan to do so soon for some tips on how to reopen, things they’d do differently, and what to expect going forward. Here are 10 things you should keep in mind as you head back to the office:

Keep Employee Safety Paramount

Before customer needs, before profitability, businesses should ensure that their employees can work in a safe, healthy environment, said Michael Goldstein, president of LAN Infotech, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and a member of CompTIA’s Managed Services Community’s executive council.

The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., solution provider has stocked plenty of personal protection equipment (masks, gloves, wipes), ensured that employees aren’t too close to each other, locked the main door so no visitors can enter unannounced, mandated adherence to suggested cleaning policies during the day.

“We’ve made it clear that we all need to treat everyone else like they are our parents, our families. Every little thing matters, and it makes people feel more comfortable,” Goldstein said.

Don’t Assume Anything

No one knows what to expect in an office these days because no one’s really been through a pandemic of this scale before. Employees will be uncertain, nervous, and have lots of questions. In many cases, the anxiety and stress could be detrimental to business productivity. Communicating regularly and being as transparent as possible can help minimize that stress, according to Goldstein.

“Tell people everything and remind them of everything. I went through every detail of what I do in my house, so they’ll know where I’m coming from. Remind them to keep their guard up and adhere to whatever practices are in place from local, state, federal officials,” he said. “I keep them up on all the company news. I got my PPE loan and I wanted them to know that. Some were worried about whether they would have a job. Relaying all that information helps us focus on what we need to do to be successful.”

Follow Appropriate Guidelines

Look to your local city, county, state and other government agencies for guidelines and recommendations (maybe even rules or laws) to help you establish new protocols for working in an office again. Health officials have said it’s critical to adhere to guidelines to help stem the pandemic, but following and even exceeding them can also benefit the mental health of your employees too, according to Corey Kirkendoll, president and CEO of 5K Technical Services, based in Plano, Texas, and Kirkendoll, chair of CompTIA’s Managed Services Community’s executive council.

5K opened its office after Memorial Day after shutting it in March and found that employees were pleased to see the company take their safety as a priority. “We take everyone’s temperature several times a day. Everybody has masks and gloves. We follow the six-foot social distancing rule. We put up plexiglass between cubicles. So far, it’s been good. Everyone’s more comfortable and it’s allowed us to be productive,” he said.

Start slowly, and Don’t Rush Back

5K’s employees initially returned only three days a week to the office, allowing them to gradually get used to working in an office environment again, a strategy that also provided the company time to fine-tune its safety measures and ensure compliance, Kirkendoll said.

“We continue to hold to social distancing. We’re only onsite with customers for emergency purposes and only if the customer is not in the office,” he said.

Returning to the office in carefully planned phases also helped 5K ensure that customer support did not falter during the transition. “We didn’t miss a beat, maybe even more productive at the end of the day. No downtime, no interruption of service, no decline in service. We’ve maintained 100% customer satisfaction throughout being remote and coming back.”

A Lot Has Changed, So Can You

If there’s one thing that the pandemic has shown Robert Senatore, managing member of Data2Go Wireless and a co-chair of CompTIA’s IoT Advisory Council, is that it’s OK to think differently than you did before—and that it’s OK to accept change.

“I’ll admit, I’ve always been an ‘old school’ thinker. I wanted my employees in close proximity to me and to each other. COVID-19 has taught me that doesn’t need to be the case,” Senatore said. “Management styles must change to adapt to how we’re working today. In my case, that needs to be a more scheduled and carefully thought out approach. Since time is limited, we need to be more effective and efficient with that time.”

Don’t Expect Things to Be as They Were

If COVID-19 hasn’t changed things permanently, it certainly has for a while. Businesses may need to roll with a few punches, figure out a few things along the way before a new routine can settle. One thing you shouldn’t do, according to Kirkendoll, is to plan to return to the way it was.

“I think this will change the way we interact, the way we work,” he said. “I think a lot of businesses and a lot of employees didn’t know they could work remote and be effective—but they’ve figured it out,” he said. “People can work remotely. I think that will drive a lot of change and people will be more willing to take technology and working remote more serious.”

Reevaluate the Size and Design of Your Office Space

A lot of companies will be taking a hard look at their office space needs going forward. If more employees are working remotely, can you get by with less space? And how will that space look in the future? There’s a lot more to consider now.

At Lenovo’s Raleigh, N.C., headquarters, employees have their own lockers now but the company is divesting itself of assigned offices in order to reduce space, according to Chris Link, Smart Edge account executive for Lenovo, and a member of CompTIA’s IoT Advisory Council. “It’s worked out good for the most part so far. I think that’s the way of the future for us,” Link said.

Kathleen Glass, CEO of Oinkodomeo, a San Diego-based virtual sales and marketing company, and member of CompTIA’s IoT Advisory Council, has been reading up on the concept of rentable conference rooms, increasingly available in cities where it doesn’t make sense to own or lease similar space that doesn’t get used full time “I’ve always been remote, but I think a lot more people are rethinking that structure and I think a lot of us will go down more virtual, rentable space,” she said.

Become the ‘Return to Work’ Expert for Your Customers

It may not always be possible, depending on individual environments and situations (as well as that of your customers), but if you’re able to return to your office before your customers return to theirs, you’ll have the experience to help them through the process too.

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking to customers,” 5K’s Kirkendoll said. “We call each customer once or twice a week, minimum, to see how it’s going. We wanted to keep a finger on the pulse. By opening our office, we were a proving ground to ensure processes worked. It’s something for us to hang our hat on. Things we prescribe or recommend for our customers, we know they work.”

Restrict Access to Your Employees

LAN Infotech keeps its office door locked during the day. If a delivery person needs access, they need to announce themselves and someone will meet them at the door, Goldstein said. “We’re also putting no more than two people in the help desk pit and other employees are scattered around the office,” he said. “We’ll never have eight people on the help desk pit at one time again.”

Goldstein and several other CompTIA members said they’re also implementing new guidelines about employees needs to visit a customer’s location. For example, maybe it has to be in off hours or when no one else is around. Meanwhile, more customer employees working remotely has created a slew of new challenges too for engineers in the field. Is it appropriate/safe to have an engineer go to a customer employee’s home? What if it’s a male engineer and a female employee?

“There’s a lot, businesswise, to discuss around that. We’ve been talking in various peer groups about how to handle those things,” Goldstein said. “Is servicing someone’s home internet covered in an MSP contract? It’s going to change the very nature of what an MSP does.”

Know that One-Size Doesn’t Fit All

After a few months of employees working remotely, many companies have noticed a common trend: some workers made the transition smoothly, but others did not. As more businesses start to reopen their offices, they may need to consider a hybrid model of being in the office and working remotely—from the entire staff down to individuals who may want to or need to split their time.

“We’ve told all our people, if you need to work remote, the option is on the table. If you want to be in the office, that’s great too. Our team rallied around being back in the office. They missed being around each other. But there are some who absolutely want that flexibility. I think you need to provide both moving forward.”

Work-From-Home Solutions in Toronto

NUMENTIS helps organizations re-tool and configure their operations for remote access and telecommuting. Our IT solutions team in Toronto also monitors networks and devices in real time to minimize the risk of cybertattack. Call us today to find out how we can help you resolve the little problems that reduce your employees’ productivity.

Source: https://numentis.com/10-things-remember-reopening-office-covid-19/

How can I protect my business from cyber attacks? 5 Ways To Improve Business Cyber-Resilience

One of those tactics is known as “defense in depth,” which is a layered approach to security involving multiple levels of defense designed to slow the attacker’s progress. Defense in depth is more than just a military strategy. It’s also a useful approach for protecting IT environments. It acknowledges that adversaries, through ever-evolving tactics and brute force, will eventually overrun the outer-most layer of defense. For this reason, it’s necessary to have additional layers of defense in place to anticipate and mitigate lost ground.

The ability to recover from adverse events – such as a ransomware attack – and return to normal operations is referred to as “cyber-resilience.” Achieving higher levels of cyber-resilience is a priority for any business that relies on access to data. Here are five tips for improving cyber-resilience based on a defense-in-depth approach.

Tip #1: Fortify your weakest link – people

Phishing attacks continue to be the primary vector for malware distribution. Deceptive emails, attachments and web links dupe employees into downloading malicious code. As methods become more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly important to educate employees about what to watch out for and what behaviors to avoid. Ongoing security awareness training ensures employees are trained with phishing simulations, IT and security best practices, and data protection and compliance requirements. These courses are designed specifically to reduce the risk and rate of infections.

Tip #2: Advanced threats require advanced antivirus

There’s no doubt, cybercriminals are getting smarter. As businesses become more effective at identifying potential threats, hackers have adapted their tactics to evade network firewalls. These evasion techniques have made it necessary for businesses to deploy advanced antivirus with threat intelligence to identify malicious attacks that otherwise look benign. An advanced antivirus uses innovative technology to detect, block and remediate (by quarantining) malicious attacks that evade other, less sophisticated antivirus solutions.

Tip #3: Create backup copies of all business data

Businesses owe it to their customers, partners and stakeholders to have a plan in place for a malware attack circumventing outer defenses. Since detecting and remediating malware infections can be time-consuming, it’s essential to have copies of files and data for business continuity. Scheduled backup with file versioning is essential for mitigating specific types of malware, like ransomware. With backup and file versioning, you can recover a clean version of a file as it existed before the infection took place. The scheduling feature is important since leaving it up to users will eventually lead to data loss. Scheduled backup with file versioning can mean the difference between paying tens of thousands of dollars in ransom and full recovery with no ransom payment.

Tip #4: Use the cloud to ensure remote file access

Keeping backups on-site accelerates recovery in most disaster scenarios. As an additional measure of resilience, however, it’s also important to keep backups in the cloud. With so many employees working from home these days, having remote access to files has proven to be essential for business continuity. By keeping backup copies in the cloud, it ensures users can access files remotely if there’s ever a disruption to the local network or a local site disaster.

Tip #5: Test recovery strategy regularly

It’s often said that there’s no backup without recovery. To make sure you can recover files and systems when it really matters, it’s important to test disaster recovery practices and procedures so you know you can achieve the recovery objectives for the business. Disasters can be small or large. So, it’s important to test simple file and folder recovery as well as large-scale system recovery. Some systems are more critical than others. For ultra-critical, tier-one systems where disruptions can be catastrophic, there’s disaster recovery as a service, which offers a secondary environment that allows for frequent testing of disaster recovery protocols. Whichever technology you deploy, a good testing guideline is once every quarter or, at a minimum, once a year to ensure the business can be cyber-resilient when necessary.

Cyber-security is a lot like military strategy. Both involve a battle of wills between adversaries that includes the use of force. It’s no wonder why cyber-security practices often borrow from military tactics.

Managed IT Services in Toronto

NUMENTIS can help protect your business from falling victim to the next cyber attack by putting the right solutions and procedures in place to mitigate the risks and severity of any attack. At NUMENTIS we are committed to ensuring your business has the right technology to maximize performance while also being highly reliable and securely protected. Contact us for your complimentary assessment.

Source: https://numentis.com/can-protect-business-cyber-attacks-5-ways-improve-business-cyber-resilience/

Is a remote workforce sustainable? A Work-From-Home Survey by Splashtop

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, employees worldwide had to resort to work from home. Soon after, the debate about remote working began – Is a remote workforce sustainable? Is productivity impacted? Which remote tools help boost productivity? Splashtop surveyed employees worldwide to find out.

Executive Summary

In May 2020, Splashtop conducted the Work-From-Home Survey to find out how professionals across industries had transitioned to working remotely during COVID-19. The following topics were covered in the survey:

• Working from home before COVID-19
• The productivity of working from home vs in the office
• Tools that help employees be productive while working from home
• Use cases of how the tools are used
• Respondents’ opinion on the future of remote work

Eight hundred and seventy (870) individuals worldwide, from various industries, took the survey.

It is interesting to note that up until recently, working from home was an option mainly in the IT industry. It was uncommon for television broadcasting stations, game developers, video producers, architects, faculty members, hospital staff, and professionals in many other
industries to work remotely. That’s in part because the licensed software applications they work with consume a lot of CPU resources and storage, and are therefore housed on physical computers in an office. They cannot be replicated easily. For security purposes, they prefer not
to have computers taken off premises when they contain proprietary content, source code, or medical records. So for industries with such particular needs, remote access solutions are setting a new trend. Continue reading to learn more about our findings.

During COVID-19, along with collaboration and communication tools, remote access and remote support solutions saw a significant spike in individual professionals and organizations alike, requesting remote access to enable their business continuity plans from home. Remote access solutions enable professionals to remotely access their work computers and carry out their tasks in real-time. Not only can IT professionals write code and provide technical support but video producers can edit videos, architects can draw up 3D models, game
developers can test builds, doctors can access patient records, students can access lab computers, all from anywhere using any device. For professionals in these fields, working from home has not been the norm until today because the ‘heavy’ licensed applications they use are
not cloud-based and still follow the on-premise model, which is not easy to replicate. With remote access solutions, the possibilities of remote work and study are endless!

Key Insights and Statistics from Survey Results

1. Organizations across all industries have successfully implemented their business continuity plans from home. This trend is possible because of the availability of new and improved technology which enables professionals in various fields to continue executing
   their tasks remotely.
   Survey result: Respondents included professionals from IT (26%), Education (18%), Healthcare (7%), Architecture & Design (5%), Media & Entertainment (5%), Finance (4%), Retail (4%), and many other industries (31%). Almost all of them were now working from home.
2. Before COVID-19 a vast majority of the group had never or rarely worked from home. This depicts the challenge that organizations have had to deal with during COVID-19. They had to enable an entire workforce to work from home, almost overnight. With
   employees never or hardly ever working from home before, organizations lacked the infrastructure for long term work from home, and on a large scale. New-age software solutions have made it possible for companies and institutions to set up a remote
   workforce effectively and quickly.
   Survey result: Before COVID-19, 36.6% had never worked from home, 34.1% had rarely worked remotely, 21.5% had frequently worked remotely, and 7.8% were remote workers.
3. Even though most employees had hardly ever worked from home, companies and employees alike experienced higher productivity while working from home. This is largely because of employees having the right collaboration, team management, project
   management, and remote access tools in place to effectively work from home.
   Survey result: 40.4% were more productive from home, 39.5% were equally productive as in the office, and only 20.1% were less productive.
4. In addition to collaboration and communications tools, remote access and support tools have enabled professionals across various roles and industries to work remotely. They can now access and/or support workstations or lab computers from home as if they were sitting right in front of it. This capability has made it possible for organizations to virtualize offices and schools. Employees, students, faculty, continue their tasks with secure access to all the offices’/schools’ computer resources.Survey result: 75% of the respondents use remote access solutions to work from home
5. Organizations and employees today prefer remote access software to traditional VPN based solutions to remote into their workstations. VPN is not easily scalable and not well suited for entire workforces working remotely.
   Survey result: 75% of the respondents use a remote access solution, of which less than 16% use VPN based solutions, to remotely access computer resources, facilitate remote learning, remotely support devices, and for the convenience of being able to work from anywhere and any device.
6. Organizations have seen an unexpected productivity increase with decreased operating and travel costs, along with increased employee satisfaction. It’s no wonder that companies like Twitter and Square have made remote work options permanent, along
   with Facebook, Google, and Microsoft announcing work from home as a long term option.
   However, it seems like most organizations are still weighing their options as the situation evolves before announcing a formal decision. It remains to be seen if COVID-19 will prove to be a catalyst for a significant global change in what has been an ‘office’ up
   until today.
   Survey result: Almost 75% of the respondents felt like their company might be more open to working from home, of which 28% think that it might also be the new normal. However, 68% said that their organization has not announced a formal decision
   regarding the future of work from home.

Read the full report (PDF)

Work-From-Home Solutions in Toronto

NUMENTIS helps organizations re-tool and configure their operations for remote access and telecommuting. Our IT solutions team in Toronto also monitors networks and devices in real time to minimize the risk of cybertattack. Call us today to find out how we can help you resolve the little problems that reduce your employees’ productivity. NUMENTIS is an authorized partner of Splashtop.

Source:https://numentis.com/remote-workforce-sustainable-work-home-survey-splashtop/