Displaying items by tag: home working

GUEST OPINION: Now a seemingly permanent part of most people’s daily lives, the shift to working from home has been a rapid and jarring experience for many organisations.

GUEST OPINION by Luke Smith, Regional Account Director, Barracuda MSP:  As Australian businesses plan for the year ahead, many are grappling with the best way to manage a constantly evolving IT security threat landscape. Indeed, research finds 83% of SMBs in Australia feel exposed to cyber threats and the figure is even higher for SMBs in New Zealand at 87%.

GUEST OPINION by Steve Singer, Regional Vice President and Country Manager – ANZ, Zscaler:  The ongoing global pandemic has caused fundamental changes to businesses. Two of the most significant have been the widespread adoption of remote working and the increased usage of cloud-based collaboration platforms.

GUEST OPINION by Steve Singer, Regional Vice President and Country Manager – ANZ, Zscaler:  The ongoing global pandemic has caused fundamental changes to businesses. Two of the most significant have been the widespread adoption of remote working and the increased usage of cloud-based collaboration platforms.

After another year of disruption and uncertainty, Australia’s business leaders are now turning their attention to what lies ahead in 2022. When it comes to technology, the outlook is a mixture of challenges and opportunities.

GUEST OPINION: While there is pressure on application developers to make their products perform better under variable network conditions, networks themselves are also ripe for rework.

Global document productivity software company Nitro Software has released research which it says shows that while there is some desire to return to the office, most employees want to continue working from home (WFH) in some capacity and expect employers to offer remote work options post-pandemic.

GUEST OPINION by Christian Lucarelli, Vice President of Sales Asia Pacific for Nintex: With a high proportion of staff likely to remain in work-from-home mode for an extended period, many Australian organisations are realising their business processes are no longer delivering the goods.

A large majority of Australian and New Zealand organisations were not adequately prepared for COVID-19 and fear the increased risk they are being exposed to through working from home and flexible work policies, according to newly published survey findings.

Australian organisations are struggling with network breaches, ransomware attacks, remote work, and more, according to the latest network security report from cloud security and data protection solutions vendor Barracuda.

Tech pros say security, troubleshooting and network management are the top technical skills needed to progress in their careers and, while they are wary of future challenges like cybersecurity threats and burnout, they believe an evolution in the IT operations of their organisations will create positive change.

GUEST OPINION by Simon Howe, Vice President Sales Asia Pacific, LogRhythm: As businesses come to terms with the reality of operating amid the legacy of COVID-19, many are realising their old approach to IT security is no longer up to the task.

Working from home has come at a cost to their productivity for some home workers, with a new survey finding that 48% of respondents reporting their work productivity decreasing.

The rapid rise in the employment of executives over the last 3 months has paused, falling by 2% in October compared to the prior month, in a reflection of the “uncertain times”, and with hiring of executives in the Information Technology sector falling into negative territory for the month, according to executive search firm EL Consult.

Australians are using work tools, including company-issued devices for personal matters, to a greater extent than their global counterparts while remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research which labels the behaviour as a security risk.

A quarter of Australians say working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has made them enjoy work more, with 45% seeing quality of life improvements through the flexibility of working from home, and with women more likely than men to find working from home easier, according to a new study of 2,000 Australians’ digital consumption habits.

Social distancing and stay-home restrictions have brought about a boom in the number of Australians playing video games, with 762,000 new gamers getting into gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, according to a new survey.

Complaints about phone and Internet services decreased 4% in the last financial year ending 30 June 2020, but despite the drop residential consumers and small businesses still made 127,151 complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman over the 12-months, according to the TIO’s 2019-20 annual report.

An extra US15 billion a week has been spent globally on technology by IT leaders to enable safe and secure home working during the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis, representing one of the biggest surges in technology investment in history - with Australian IT leaders increasing spending on cyber security, despite struggling to find skilled cyber security professionals, according to a new global survey.

GUEST OPINION COVID-19 has accelerated the digital transformation plans and cloud computing investments for many organisations in Australia, to ease the burdens placed on the traditional business model by the shift to remote working. The net result is an increase in overall business productivity, putting them in a good position to recover from the pandemic and create a new future for their business.