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It’s crazy to look back and think about how a year ago, we hadn’t even gotten deep into the chaos of 2020 yet, the times of working from home and rationing essentials seem like they were ages ago. Though networking has nothing to do with the great toilet paper shortage, we are still finding that many are continuing to work from home or have even adopted hybrid strategies to best keep their employees safe and sound with this pandemic still taking place. Even before the unprecedented shift to the home office that took place last year, there were already several key trends emerging that were evolving to reshape working patterns for the better. Of course, with this amount of change put into place, the security and networking landscape must be amplified as well, and there are several ways to assist with that.
Remote Work is the New Normal
It certainly feels like employees working from home has become the new normal, whether that change is a temporary or indefinite switch-up, it’s made quite the impact. These users need to be protected as well as their counterparts at the main office locations that may exist, because it’s been found that a lot of this new network traffic is headed straight for the main hub, The Internet. It’s no secret that most organizations have adopted VPN policies and regulations for those employees choosing to work from home, but there is still an additional need for protection under that school of thought.
On the other hand, many have begun to integrate hybrid working options, for those who can’t feel the productivity flourishing at home, so their organization offered up a choice for employees to pick from. This was found to be a nightmare for many IT workers because many challenges have been presented when it comes to establishing a secure and reliable connection. Considering everyone’s current predicament, work can only be done when it has been digitized and connected at all points, and with that being said workflows can be digitized to increase efficiencies, operations, and the overall input and output. The workplace of the future will likely support more flexible arrangements, replacing dedicated workstations, with more open spaces that can quickly be sanitized and altered at any given time.
The Push for The Cloud
This popularity within The Cloud has been surging with employees working from home, to avoid the spread of the pandemic. It’s been predicted that Gartner’s 2021 analysis found that public cloud end-user adoption rates are projected to grow by 18% this year alone. Experts have found that the ability to use on-demand, scalable cloud models to achieve cost-efficiency and business continuity is allowing organizations to rapidly accelerate their digital transformation plans, within their on-site and off-site locations. The increased consumption of Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS) is driven by the need for remote workers to have access to high-performing, content-rich, and scalable data to perform their duties, no matter where they are logging in from.
Protecting Employees at Home
IT staff members have been reeling from the large transition to ‘work-from-home’ operations, especially with the increase of newly adopted and integrated digital collaborative tools such as Zoom, Skype, Slack, WebEx, and more. 2020 was flourished with the assistance of digital tools to help connect employees to their employers, no matter where they’re clocking in from. This remote work requires a reliable connection, but also one that can support bandwidth-intensive applications that employees need to stay connected and collaborate remotely, such as video-conferencing with several other users and other platforms and services. Many networking vendors and virtual platform services has begun to heighten the quality of their offerings, so that way users can receive the highest quality streaming capabilities and the stay safe from potential threats and attackers in the long run.
The Great SASE Evolution – What does it mean?
SASE or Secure Access Service Edge is a term coined by Gartner, that essentially simplifies wide-area networking and security by delivering both as a cloud service directly to the source of the connection, rather than through the enterprise data center. Specifically speaking, as the networking market continues to mature throughout the months, vendors are working to tie security and SD-WAN tighter together in collaboration. When more complex scenarios are inputted into the workflow, this can slow down an IT team’s response time, which can allow for additional complications as they go. SASE alters this paradigm through a new networking and security platform that is essentially identity-driven, cloud-native, globally distributed, and securely connects every edge involves (i.e., WAN, Cloud, Mobile, and IoT). With SASE, enterprises and organizations can reduce the time to develop new services, deliver them to market at a more efficient rate, and respond to changes in business conditions within the businesses’ competitive landscape.
