The response and urgency with which we all had to react to COVID-19 came on quickly. Suddenly, we found ourselves having to ramp up an offsite workforce, testing company productivity, IT teams and infrastructure. While some had remote employees or work from home policies, a completely remote workforce and IT infrastructure operating out of office was not a fully baked plan for most.
Like thousands of companies around the world, in response to COVID-19, TBI made the decision to put a mandatory work-from-home policy in place for the safety and health of their employees on March 16, 2020. Within 24 hours, the 200+ employees of the tech company were fully operational, up and running from their respective homes without difficulty or problems.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely was already more popular than ever before. One Gallup survey in 2019 found that more than 40% of Americans worked from home occasionally, and in recent years, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) noted that roughly 16% of Americans (nearly 30 million people) now work remotely on a regular basis.
The infiltration of mobile devices in the workplace isn’t new news. It may be hard to believe though that mobile devices entered the workforce just a little more than a decade ago. More recently, the influx of BYOD, the ever-growing number of remote workers, and the mind-blowing pace at which technology is advancing have all kept IT departments on their toes and CIOs awake at night. As such, it should come as no surprise that with this increase comes growing strain and an increasing number of obstacles facing a CIO; they and their staff need to continuously shift their priorities and strategies to accommodate the current challenges that are plaguing their organization and adapting to the constant changes.
In order to enable employee mobility, businesses are being pushed to offer reliable, flexible and up-to-date communication opportunities within their environment. The costs of these services continue to grow exponentially, and many organizations don’t have the bandwidth or strategies in place in order to optimize these expenditures and optimize the company’s overall usage.
A core component of EMM, mobile device management is software that enables IT staff to secure, control and enforce mobility policies on devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and other endpoints, simultaneously protecting the corporate network while also optimizing the functionality and security of mobile devices.
As mobile technologies continue to emerge and evolve, businesses will invest more in mobility. According to Citrix, 71% of enterprises currently regard internal mobility as a top priority. That should come as no surprise when seeing the benefit it can bring to both employees and employers. Among many other perks, mobility enables employees to access critical apps and data remotely, allowing them to be productive when out of the office.
It’s interesting to note that device loss accounts for 41% of breaches, compared with 25% that are derived from hacking and malware, according to Trend Micro. Overall, there has been a 300% increase in mobile device OS vulnerabilities since 2011, and businesses are realizing the increasingly critical need to protect company—and customer— data. As networking environments have evolved, IT departments have adapted to growing security threats in mobile devices. Cabir, the first virus that infected smartphones, reared its ugly head in 2004, and by the time iPhones and other smartphones emerged, a whole new generation of security woes had been born.
