One of the unexpected silver linings to the global coronavirus crisis has been the rapid growth the cloud industry has enjoyed. The shift to remote working during the various lockdowns that have taken place over the course of 2020, was largely, if not entirely, facilitated by cloud services. This has meant that while other sectors have struggled and there has been an overall economic downturn, cloud companies have performed relatively well financially.

Although they wouldn’t want to characterise the past few months as profiting from the pandemic, the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams have surged in usage and revenue, with the latter surpassing 44 million users as early as March.  This period has also accelerated many digital transformation projects, with engineers more than capable of carrying out projects at pace and scale, including the traditionally lethargic public sector. This success, however, has been driven entirely by the effects of the pandemic, forcing the industry to question whether, and how, it can adapt once their services are no longer as highly sought after.

Shifting sands

While we all rejoiced at the news that a potential COVID-19 vaccine may be available for distribution before the end of the year, shares in a handful of companies dropped sharply in response, including at least 15% reduction in the valuation of Zoom.

Whether things go back to the way they were, or cloud companies continue to play a more pivotal role than ever, is yet to be determined. For independent cloud consultant Danielle Royston, the goal of going ‘back to normality’ in 2021 is misplaced. “There’s no point wasting time and energy trying to return to the halcyon days of pre-COVID,” she says. “Let’s focus instead on some of the positive ‘disruptions’ we’ve seen this year. In all the companies I’ve been at, I’ve promoted – and in some cases fully converted to – remote working. I saw this as the inevitable direction that work and society was going, as the cloud computing tools were already there. And it makes sense: A better quality of life for employees, ease of collaboration, cutting the costs of business travel.”

This is a trend that Tom Wrenn, cloud investment expert and partner at private equity firm ECI Partners, predicts will continue well into next year, telling IT Pro that COVID-19 forced many companies into rapidly adopting cloud-based operations. These, driven by government-enforced lockdowns, allowed them to continue operating remotely. “Now, having done a basic shift to cloud-based systems,” he adds, “2021 will be the year of full cloud adoption, with businesses starting to optimise all its benefits; for example, data analytics and AI. If rapid investment was needed in 2020, next year businesses will want to see a return on that investment and will expect to see more from their cloud computing providers.”

Remoting-in

Although the recent transition to remote working is a trend sparked by COVID-19, the consensus is that it’s the beginning of a wider cultural shift. Former IBM boss Ginni Rometty is among the latest to suggest as much, claiming mass remote working will continue in some form as part of a broader hybrid model in future. This may involve companies keeping some physical presence while establishing the infrastructure and equipment to allow workers to work remotely as and when desired.

Cisco CTO for UK and Ireland, Chintan Patel, agrees, telling IT Pro that remote working gained widespread acceptance during COVID-19, even in organisations where it was unthinkable before. This means cloud and software as a service (SaaS) tools will continue to remain a crucial part of many setups, even though businesses will mostly return to a form of ‘hybrid’ model. “For remote working, cloud plays a central role; think secure cloud-based collaboration, accessing cloud-based business applications, and extending the security perimeter to thousands of devices,” he explains. “It’s important to note, though, that cloud-based consumption models are not limited to remote working only. As to those returning to the offices, we see technology can help make the workplace more secure and efficient. As and when companies prepare for a return to office, they also need to optimise their space, address worker concerns about sanitation and social distancing and plan how to communicate policies and information clearly.”

Technology will play a major part in instigating the changes needed in future, with a key role to play for many of the firms that have enjoyed success during the pandemic. While demand for software such as video conferencing platforms may not be as sky-high as it was at the beginning of the pandemic, Wrenn argues the next big step is how cloud companies can eat further into the market share enjoyed by the traditional telephone industry. “More and more businesses are using Microsoft Teams or Zoom to interact,” he explains, “when previously they would have used conference lines or even called a person directly due to it being more convenient. Cloud providers need to think about how they can make the most of this opportunity as the way in which people interact changes.”

To infinity and beyond

To some extent, we should all consider ourselves lucky the global pandemic happened when it did, given that cloud computing has only in recent recently become as advanced as it is now. Thus, rather than ‘profiting from the pandemic’, this period has been the making of the industry. After all, “cloud storage, processing, and compute facilities are already set up, and ready to expand easily and automatically, as and when enterprises need,” according to Royston, who claims this wouldn’t have been the case ten to 15 years go. “It would’ve been an epic failure and caused even more disruption and long-term damage to global economies. This year, white-collar workers being able to quickly adapt to working from home in their millions is part of what’s helped many sectors stay afloat.  And it’s because of the investment and ongoing work of hyperscalers over the past few years that’s meant businesses can support workers in doing this.”

Connectivity, too, will continue to grow as organisations’ reliance SaaS tools increases too, Patel adds, with firms expecting more from these companies beyond provision. With cloud infrastructures becoming increasingly diverse, especially with applications adding more layers of complexity, businesses will be looking to strengthen their infrastructure. This will be achieved by gaining deeper visibility across their IT estates, ensuring workloads have continuous access to required resources and running systems that connect and protect at scale – from on-prem to hybrid cloud configurations. This is in addition to using technologies such as machine learning to give customers tools to manage their ever-growing data lakes. This is where providers can step in to guide customers on their migration journeys

As such, the greatest challenge facing cloud providers, in light of the above, will largely be customer retention, according to Tom Wrenn. “If we take online meeting services as an example, historically businesses would have had to invest in a service, such as [Cisco] WebEx, which is often costly and comes with a lot of equipment,” he says. “Today, however, businesses are using Zoom and Teams for this and can just turn services on and off with little upfront investment. This means that customers aren’t locked into providers in a way they once were. As a result, cloud computing providers will need to over-deliver for their clients, retaining a high level of customer service as well as ensuring that service levels don’t decline as they undergo a huge period of growth.”

Spotify has been forced to issue a password reset for users after admitting that their information was exposed to some of the firm’s third-party business partners.

The music streaming giant said in a customer data breach notification sent to the California attorney general that the privacy snafu was only discovered and fixed after seven months.

“On Thursday November 12, Spotify discovered a vulnerability in our system that inadvertently exposed your Spotify account registration information, which may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify,” it explained.

“Spotify did not make this information publicly accessible. We estimate that this vulnerability existed as of April 9, 2020 until we discovered it on November 12, 2020, when we took immediate steps to correct it.”

Spotify said it has contacted all of those partners to ensure they delete the exposed customer information, and has reset the passwords of affected users.

“We have no reason to believe that any unauthorized use of your information has or will occur, however, we urge you to change the passwords of all other online accounts for which you use the same email address and password,” it added.

This is the third security incident affecting the firm in recent months. A few days ago a hacktivist calling themselves ‘Daniel’ hijacked the Spotify for Artists page, posting messages in support of Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.

A few days before that, in late November, security researchers discovered a leaky cloud database containing logins for up to 350,000 Spotify users likely to have been part of a credential stuffing campaign.

Laurence Pitt, technical security lead at Juniper Networks, urged internet users to use a password manager to help them store strong, unique credentials for each online account.

“Many people pay for premium Spotify services and with access to a password, anyone would be able to redirect a subscription for their own use,” he added.

“Password re-use is dangerous because if any of the data from this exposure does fall into the wrong hands, then it will end up in brute-force attack databases providing valid username/password combinations for access to other services.”

The world has seemed a better place lately, with improved optimism around an effective Covid vaccine. As one expert commented, we are not out of the woods yet but it seems like we are on the right path.

What is becoming more apparent, though, is that, while firms are looking at their return to office plans as various lockdowns come to an end, a pre-March 2020 working environment for the majority in the financial services world is very unlikely.

Discussions we have had over recent weeks indicate most businesses are looking at a hybrid approach, with staff spending two to three days in the office and the balance working from home. The pandemic has had an impact on behaviours and conduct and allowed people to re-evaluate what is important to them.

This year, we have seen quite a few firms change their leadership teams, enrol new recruits and undertake fit and proper assessments on their staff, all via remote technology.

So, how are we managing our businesses in this virtual environment and how do we adapt to the anticipated dual world of office and home?

Bear in mind that, with the first lockdown, no one knew how long it was going to last. Business continuity plans just happened, firms got on with it and by and large, from a pure operational perspective, it worked.

It is only now, as the permanency of remote working becomes the reality, that senior managers are thinking about what risks they are facing.

Let’s start with operational risk. The control and protection of data in remote environments can be very challenging, so we are seeing more firms undertake an impact assessment on how their staff operate day to day.

This is particularly acute if people are sharing accommodation and working in communal places where it is difficult to keep screens locked, or are required to attend meetings when others are in the room.

People risk is another worrying consideration, with the long-term mental and physical health impacts from prolonged isolation very real. Can your team and one-to-one discussions really establish if someone is struggling

Spotting personality or behavioural traits from a screen, as opposed to face to face, is so much more difficult, so managers have had to adapt, become more empathetic, tolerant and prepared to listen. Driving a genuine “speak-up” culture has been the objective of many firms.

The FCA has issued a number of guidance notes on meeting regulatory expectations at this time, topped up with speeches from senior heads reiterating the need for efficient and effective supervision of staff and fair treatment of customers.

We have seen a number of instances where staff have either become stranded overseas or taken the opportunity over the summer months to base themselves abroad.

While such situations may have a personal tax implication, it can pose a dilemma from a regulatory position, particularly if the individual is the money laundering reporting officer or compliance officer, where the expectation is that they would normally be UK based.

Management of these sensitive staff and regulatory matters throw increasing challenges into the mix for those running a business.

Being fair and consistent is key, not only from a wider reputational standpoint but also in how well you are regarded by your people.

Empathy and flexibility now is likely to engender loyalty and hard work for the months to come.

Companies around the globe had to quickly adjust to a new kind of work environment when the Covid-19 pandemic forced a massive shift to remote work. Several months later, organisations and employees around the world are still adjusting to remote and hybrid work business models. In addition to the personal and organisational adjustments that must be made, IT strategies have also been forced to make adjustments.

Adjusting to the hybrid workforce

A recent Gallup poll reported that 59% of US workers would like to continue working from home “as much as possible” after the pandemic subsides. And only 41% would return to working at the office as much as they did pre-pandemic. Some companies like Google have said employees will work remotely until next year, and others have said they’ll enact it as a permanent option.

Still, not everyone can work from home – there will always be positions that require a presence in an office or some other work site. And of course, not everyone wants to work from home if given the choice. Research from Barclays found that less than 10% of Americans actually want to work remotely all the time. The more common desire is for flexibility and the option to come into the office a few days a week.

That means a hybrid work approach is likely to continue, in which some people work remotely, and others work in a more traditional environment. As such, companies must shift their security and cloud strategies accordingly

The cloud strategy for hybrid work

The pandemic accelerated cloud adoption but the immediacy of the pandemic meant that many companies had to move quickly, sometimes letting security take a back seat to other concerns like agility, productivity and efficiency.

The past several months have seen the acceleration of multi-cloud implementations. In addition to using private clouds, employees working remotely are also accessing applications from public clouds and consuming services delivered from the cloud.

The traditional data centre-server, hub and spoke model has been replaced by the end-user as the centre of focus – sitting on an endpoint on the LAN edge accessing resources in multiple private and public clouds. Hybrid clouds and distributed computing will be standard for the foreseeable future.

Accelerated cloud adoption and the need for branch offices and other remote locations to access multiple clouds is exacerbating the limitations of traditional WAN solutions. Lack of centralised management, complexity, expense and cumbersome implementations are just a few reasons why so many enterprises are adopting SD-WAN for networking and secure access server edge (SASE) for cloud-based integration of networking and security.

The need to move beyond traditional hub and spoke architectures in which back-hauled traffic is bottle-necked at the corporate data centre is highlighting the emergence of hybrid hardware and software defined networks. It’s quite clear that digital infrastructure success requires an integrated network and security approach. In order to achieve business outcomes and deliver enhanced end-user experiences, security and network management must be integrated from the outset to deliver security, as well as network and application performance.

The shift to cloud based resources and emergence of more and more network edges in the LAN, WAN and cloud, has given rise to what Gartner calls SASE, an emerging offering that combines comprehensive network security functions with comprehensive WAN capabilities. Gartner believes that SASE will be foundational to enterprise networking in the next few years. SASE pairs network security functions with WAN networking strategy to support organisations’ dynamic secure access and compute needs. Accelerated multi-cloud adoption is one of the forces driving growth in SD-WAN, SD-Branch and SASE.

Increased complexity is a natural byproduct when a high percentage of an organisation’s workforce suddenly moves to remote working and accesses corporate resources across multiple clouds. Security teams should plan for extending visibility and control across the LAN, WAN and cloud edges. This requires a security platform that is broad, integrated and automated – as well as open to support multiple vendors.

The convergence of security and networking

Our notions of work as something we do rather than just a place we commute to and from, has been forever changed by the pandemic. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation trends – making some form remote work a permanent fixture in organisations of all sizes.

IT leaders must be ready for the long-term effects of the hybrid workforce and how to continue to keep their customers, networks and employees secure. Business outcomes and user experiences are becoming dependent on the standard of Zero Trust and integrated security and networking. This is becoming the foundation for security-driven networking – the convergence of multiple areas of expertise that creates the agility, security and capabilities that today’s organisations need.