Can security and usability co-exist in a remote working environment?

Now that we’ve settled into the rhythm of remote working, companies need to transition from the bootstrapped survival plans that were implemented back in 2020 to mature(r) remote working strategies. The early gripes of remote working such as an improper desk setup, disconnect after disconnect from the corporate VPN or multiple 2FA prompts throughout the day may have been tolerable initially, but cannot persist in the long term. IT teams are now charged with provisioning technologies to eliminate productivity drain and enable employees to work effectively wherever they are. While business growth hinges on employee productivity, IT professionals will undoubtedly be mindful of the security-usability tradeoff. Users need to be granted an appropriate level of access without making authentication arduous. Devices need to be thoroughly analyzed for threats and vulnerabilities regardless of ownership and management status. Access to corporate applications needs to be brokered whether hosted on-premise or in the cloud. In our upcoming session, we’ll discuss how to balance security and usability in the context of remote working: Usability: employees shouldn’t have to worry about how they’re going to get their work done; it should be as simple as flipping open a laptop and logging on. We’ll discuss how an SDP can eliminate the productivity problems associated with remote working without compromising security. Performance: an architecture that scales and adapts to the growing needs of your business is important for manageability. We’ll go over how an SDP reduces the management burden of traditional access technologies while eliminating the need to adopt point solutions to deal with niche security use cases. Privacy: employees are more mindful of the blur between work and personal lives, mainly because there hasn’t been a division for the past two years. How can IT teams overcome the privacy concerns of employees while making sure that they have the needed observability?