There are numerous “Work from Home” (WFH) employee challenges and solutions that are talked about again and again to give comfort and encouragement to the employee. We’ve all had the Zoom call with a surprise screaming child screeching in the background. Or the obnoxious continuous barking of a beloved dog at the approaching package delivery to the doorstep. These embarrassing interruptions to our ‘LIVE’ deep collaborative brainstorming session have become all too familiar.

Organized time-management is important when working from home to cultivate a balanced work-life balance. Creating an agenda for work and sticking to it will develop necessary boundaries that are particularly difficult when your laptop is planted so conveniently next to you while enjoying a movie with your family.

Many employees, even the most introverted, have also experienced loneliness and feelings of isolation.  In the age we live in, technology gives us the means to utilize tools for collaboration and communication with others.

Inefficient communication, absence of metrics, and lack of leadership development are all barriers to remote work options.

How to Avoid the Remote Work Disconnect and Retain Your Workplace

1. Create Social Communication Online

• Connect with Technology – Continue to keep connected with employees through technology and use video conferences, when possible, to foster feelings of being a part of the team.
• Plan for Meeting Time – Internal communications about projects, goals, and team accomplishments are necessary to help keep employees up to date. Scheduling time for both one-on-ones and team meetings to share will empower workers and support feelings of being connected and engaged.
• Acknowledge Great Work – Communication will create a strong growing relationship so asking for and listening to feedback can continue to grow trust. A positive company culture boosts feelings of sharing thoughts and ideas. Acknowledge what you heard from them, as this is fundamental to keep remote employees engaged.
• Show Recognition – Pulling in a nice paycheck is always great, but employee recognition can be an even more effective, but simple, way to show appreciation. An online recognition platform can be advantageous for employees to see, comment, and encourage one another. Employee recognition from leadership as well as peers promotes value, connectedness, appreciation.
• Develop Deeper Connections – Promote social communication through team connections, games and activities to continue to grow your relationship. By asking about family and what they like to do outside of work, or how their mental and emotional stresses are during these unprecedented times will help feelings of loneliness and isolation.

2. Metrics

• WFH Employee Productivity Measuring Tools – Measuring productivity can be as simple as output per unit of time. Therefore, policies and processes created for each individual job that are clear and concise as to how your company will measure your productivity is crucial. Employees will know what will be expected of them and will establish trust.
• Generate Phases for Tasks Assigned – When tasks are laid out clearly employees and employers can visibly report daily, weekly, and yearly. Additionally, planning for future projects will be straightforward with this clear-cut reporting of tasks assigned in phases.
• Use of Project Management Software – Everyone can be on the same wavelength if all employees are trained to invariably report detailed explanations of tasks that are still in progress and others finalized on a cloud-based software tool. With clear expectations already in place, it will help employees prioritize work and again build trust.
• Put Into Action a Strong Reporting System – Prompt reporting keeps everyone informed on work status, pinpoint possible obstacles, and when take prompt action. Depending on the leadership team and what each leader prefers, will establish which reports that will be generated at end of day, weekly, and monthly.

3. Leadership Development

• Adjust Your Perspective of Work – In the past, companies and leadership have based performance measurement on what they can ‘see’.  Remote work removes this direct visibility to the actions and performance of employees. This flawed expectation must be adjusted to bridge the gap between company practices and the working conditions that employees want.
• Train Managers – Many companies do not realize that their new working arrangement is unproductive because they have simply sent staff home, rather than giving employees and managers the proper training or resources to successfully work remotely.
• Fill the Toolbox – To ensure your employees are confident and empowered to perform at the top of the game, make sure your team is ready to succeed and has a full toolbelt on with all the necessary training to be productive and engaged.

Help your team succeed with the toolbelt and training required to engage and retain a satisfied remote workforce. It will keep your teams connected and productive.

The post Tips to Avoid Remote Work Disconnect appeared first on Digital IT News.

“The era of multi-cloud is here, driven by digital transformation, cost concerns and organizations wanting to avoid vendor lock-in. Incredibly, more than half of the respondents of our survey have already experienced business value from a multi-cloud strategy,” said Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO, HashiCorp. “However, not all organizations have been able to operationalize multi-cloud, as a result of skills shortages, inconsistent workflows across cloud environments, and teams working in silos.”

State of Cloud Adoption: Most Organizations Have Already Adopted Multi-Cloud
The survey showed that multi-cloud is overwhelmingly the standard operations model for IT organizations of all sizes, in all regions, and every industry, with 76% of survey respondents stating their organization has already adopted a multi-cloud strategy. Survey responses also indicate that this number is expected to increase to 86% in two years. Fifty-three percent of respondents believe that a multi-cloud strategy has helped to achieve the organization’s business goals, with large enterprises currently recognizing the most value from multi-cloud.

Digital transformation (34%) was cited by respondents as the number one most significant driver for multi-cloud adoption, followed by avoiding single vendor lock-in (30%) and cost reductions (28%). Digital transformation ranked highest among large enterprises, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and within the financial services vertical.

Of the big three public clouds, AWS was the leading cloud provider used by respondents (88%). However, respondents expect their use of AWS to remain the same during the next two years. Microsoft Azure ranked second in terms of use or intended use (74%), while Google Cloud was third (64%).

Cloud Spending — and Overspending
Cloud budgets vary by organization size, vertical, and geographic region. Forty percent of respondents’ organizations have an annual cloud spend of $100,000 to $2 million, while 27% of organizations spend less than $100,000 annually. Eighteen percent of organizations spend between $2 million and $10 million, and 15% spend more than $10 million annually.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents said their organization overspent their planned budgets on cloud, most often because of shifting priorities (29%) or because of unexpected needs related to COVID-19 (21%). Organizations with larger cloud budgets were more likely to have a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), with 66% of organizations with an annual cloud budget of $5 million to $50 million having one, compared to 40% of organizations overall surveyed.

Cloud Program Challenges and Inhibitors: Concerns about Costs and Skills
While the survey shows that the cloud — and multi-cloud in particular — is critical to meeting business goals, it also revealed several areas of concern for organizations.

Cloud inhibitors and challenges varied across regions, industry, and company size, as well as by component of the technology stack. Respondents stated the top inhibitors to multi-cloud programs are cost concerns (51%), security concerns (47%), and lack of in-house skills (41%). Similarly, organizations are struggling to operationalize multi-cloud. Top reasons include skills shortages (57%), budget constraints that affect headcount (27%), inconsistent workflows across cloud environments (33%), organizations and teams working in silos, and poor collaboration or processes that are too complex (29%).

Security: A Driver and Inhibitor for Cloud Adoption
Survey results showed that cloud security was both a driver and an inhibitor for multi-cloud adoption. Respondents agreed that the top cloud security concerns were data and privacy protection (40%), data theft (33%), and regulatory compliance (31%).

Staffing and skill shortages (26%) topped the list when respondents were asked about the most significant cloud security challenges. That was followed by insufficient tooling and no real-time visibility and insight (12% each).

Cloud Is Not Just a Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
There were some surprising results related to the effects of COVID-19 on organizations’ cloud adoption. Forty-six percent of respondents stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had not accelerated cloud adoption, while 54% of respondents stated that COVID-19 had some effect on their cloud adoption timelines. Nineteen percent said it had a low impact, accelerating efforts by six to 12 months, and 26% said it had a moderate impact, accelerating efforts by one to two years. Nine percent of organizations said the pandemic had accelerated their efforts by more than two years.

The top infrastructure initiatives that were accelerated as a result of COVID-19 were infrastructure as code (49%), container orchestration (41%), compliance and governance, and network infrastructure automation (33% each). However, it was notable that COVID-19 increased the use of open source software for 39% of respondents.

Methodology
The 2021 HashiCorp State of Cloud Strategy Survey was conducted in February 2021. HashiCorp reached out to approximately 300,000 people for whom we had opt-in email addresses. To encourage responses, we offered an incentive drawing. We received 3,205 responses from around the world, though not all respondents answered all 34 questions. Responses by location were North America (39%); Europe, Middle East, and Africa (34%); Asia-Pacific (20%); Latin America (6%), no response (1%).

Resources
State of the Cloud Strategy Survey: https://hashi.co/3yCjG27
Blog: https://hashi.co/37AuD8C

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In the new study, Thriving in an AI World, high numbers of business leaders from the following industries say AI is at least moderately functional in their organizations, including those in:  industrial manufacturing (93 percent), financial services (84 percent), tech (83 percent), retail (81 percent); life sciences (77 percent), healthcare (67 percent) and government (61 percent).  In addition, several industries saw a significant increase from last year’s report: financial services (37-percentage point increase), retail sector (29-percentage point increase) and tech sector (20-percentage point increase).

According to Traci Gusher, Principal of Artificial Intelligence, “Leaders are experiencing COVID-19 whiplash, with AI adoption skyrocketing as a result of the pandemic. But many say it’s moving too fast. That’s probably because of current debate surrounding the ethics, governance and regulation of AI.  Many business leaders do not have a view into what their organizations are doing to control and govern AI and may fear risks are developing.”

Specifically, half of business leaders in industrial manufacturing (55 percent), retail and tech (49 percent in each) say AI is moving faster than it should in their industry. Concerns about the speed of AI adoption are particularly pronounced among small companies (63 percent), business leaders with high AI knowledge (51 percent), and Gen Z and Millennial business leaders (51 percent).

Leaders confident in AI solving industry problems, including COVID-19
Business leaders from both small (88 percent) and large (80 percent) companies say AI technology helped their company during the COVID-19 outbreak. As we continue to navigate the pandemic, life sciences and healthcare business leaders are overwhelmingly confident in AI’s ability to monitor the spread of COVID-19 cases (94 percent and 91 percent), help with vaccine development (90 percent and 94 percent) and distribution (90 percent and 88 percent), respectively.

Beyond the pandemic, business leaders are confident in AI’s ability to solve major industry problems. Specifically, these include:

• Financial services business leaders surveyed are confident in AI’s ability to detect fraud (93 percent), higher than last year’s report (85 percent).
• And government decision-makers surveyed are confident in AI’s ability to improve bureaucratic efficiency (79 percent).

Business leaders optimistic about new administration, want more regulation
Business leaders across industries believe the Biden administration will do more to help advance the adoption of AI in the enterprise: industrial manufacturing (90 percent), tech (88 percent), retail (85 percent), financial services (82 percent), life sciences (81 percent), government (79 percent) and healthcare (73 percent).

Additionally, younger (Gen Z and Millennial) business leaders are more likely (90 percent) than older (Gen X and Baby Boomer) business leaders (79 percent) to be more optimistic about the potential actions the Biden administration will do to help advance the adoption of AI in enterprise.

Even with the optimism, business leaders are conscious that controls are needed and overwhelmingly believe the government has a role to play in regulating AI technology: industrial manufacturing (94 percent), retail (87 percent), financial services (86 percent), life sciences (86 percent), tech (86 percent), healthcare (84 percent) and government (82 percent). Business leaders with high AI knowledge (92 percent) are more likely to say the government should be involved in regulating AI technology in comparison to total business leaders (87 percent).

Compared to last year’s report, business leaders are more interested in government involvement, with financial services increasing by 27-percentage points, retail increasing by 24-percentage points, and tech increasing by 17-percentage points.

“We are seeing very high levels of support this year across all industries for more AI regulation.  One reason for this may be that, as the technology advances very quickly, insiders want to avoid AI becoming the ‘Wild Wild West.’ Additionally, a more robust regulatory environment may help facilitate commerce. It can help remove unintended barriers that may be the result of other laws or regulations, or due to lack of maturity of legal and technical standards,” said Rob Dwyer, Principal, Advisory, specializing in technology in Government.

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The COVID-19 pandemic imposed an immediate and massive shift to a remote workforce. This created new vulnerabilities by expanding organizations’ attack surfaces. The pandemic has created a situation where virtually all remote employees need privileged access to perform their jobs and has hastened the “identity as the new perimeter” paradigm.

This survey uncovers the requirements for creating a secure remote workforce that protects the business with PIM in the post-COVID era. Key findings include:

The impact of COVID-19 on the acceleration of the remote workforce

• 91% forecasted increase in size of remote workforce, versus 45% before the pandemic
• 53% of US workers reported wanting to work from home more, even after the pandemic is over

The inadequacy of perimeter-based network security and legacy remote access technologies, like VPN, in securing remote workers

• 83% believe the increase in remote workers increases the risk of a security incident
• 47% rank “Preparing for an Increasingly Remote Workforce” as a Top 5 security priority for 2021

A comprehensive PIM solution mitigates threats by protecting privileges across accounts, endpoints, and access pathways

• 91% of respondents agree that PIM plays a crucial role in securing remote workers
• 86% of respondents say their organizations will invest more in PIM over the next two years to address the risks related to remote working
• 56% report that improved IT administration efficiencies are the top benefit of PIM

“The findings of this global survey confirm the fact that the pandemic has accelerated the borderless enterprise and brings identity to the forefront of the new perimeter,” states Morey Haber, CTO and CISO at BeyondTrust. “To protect their assets, enterprises must secure their data throughout their IT estate. This requires comprehensive PIM solutions that enable uncompromised access to applications and data from anywhere, by any user or device.”

The definition of who requires privileged access can no longer be reserved for IT administrators; it must include use cases related to remote working. Having robust access controls allows employees to conduct their jobs wherever they are, without incurring risk. PIM strategies must go beyond traditional password management and include a holistic approach, including endpoint privilege management and secure remote access.

Key Recommendations

Privileged users are critical to the operations of digital business, yet they also present a substantial security risk. Organizations need effective PIM controls to limit the attack surface while enabling regular business operations. The survey results point to the following best practices:

• Plan for dramatically more remote privileged users

The rapid increase in the need for privileged access by remote workers will open many security holes and compliance violations. To avoid this, set up tools and processes to discover and categorize privileged users and activities to determine appropriate access rights. Apply security controls that best fit the needs of various privileged user types and situations.

• Establish a strong governance model for PIM

Traditional PIM tools don’t effectively meet the rules and governance of privileged users. Evolve and expand your solutions to secure changing environments and attack surfaces.

• Implement strategies to reduce the attack surface and prevent lateral movement

Adhere to the principle of least privilege (POLP) by granting privileged users just enough access to resources, and just enough permissions to perform actions required for their jobs.

• Apply just-in-time (JIT) access approaches for dynamic business use cases

Privileged access must be agile within business areas that have a high rate of change and where personnel or machine identities must access resources. Limiting access to time-bound requests with context-aware workflows for approval removes standing access while enabling the business to move forward.

• Balance UX with security controls for remote privileged users

Make the authentication and access request process as frictionless as possible. Employ unobtrusive security controls, like session monitoring and threat detection, that run in the background and alert you to high-risk activities.

• Provide centralized, consistent administration with an integrated PIM suite

Malicious actors target privileges to gain access to and move laterally throughout an organization. Comprehensive PIM tools and approaches will help protect your enterprise. A holistic PIM solution will provide full visibility of threats across the privileged landscape. An integrated platform will provide consistent administration, reporting, and response capabilities.

The full survey report is available for download at beyondtrust.com/next-normal. In addition, on January 2y at 11:00 EST, join independent research firm senior analyst Sean Ryan for a webinar titled, An Analyst’s Take: Securing Privileged Identities & Remote Access in 2021.

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“CFOs have more data at their fingertips than anyone else in the company,” said Manish Sharma, group chief executive of Accenture Operations. “Operating with real-time data puts the CFO in a unique position to drive positive change for the business, pivoting the finance function from measuring value to creating value and driving growth.”

When asked about the greatest areas of concern to their business for 2021, CFOs most often cited the potential impact of rising interest rates (cited by 49%), disruption from the pandemic (47%), economic recession (47%), and hiring and retaining the right talent (42%). Given the complexity of these challenges, the majority (68%) believe that a real-time financial model — which makes use of AI, machine learning algorithms and real-time, diverse data sets — will be critical to enabling better business decisions, more-accurate forecasting models and improved data accuracy.

Even during the pandemic, respondents said they’re investing, on average, 33% of their finance department’s budget this year to building real-time operations and processes. Large U.S. companies — i.e., those with at least US$10 billion in annual revenue — appear even more committed to such a capability, saying they intend to invest at least 50% of their (2020-2021) finance-department budgets in this area. Roughly two-fifths (44%) of respondents said they plan to have nearly all finance processes and operations in real-time over the next three years.

 “If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that businesses that thrive in an unpredictable environment do so by being agile and swiftly adapting to change,” said Dr. Christian Campagna, Ph.D., who leads Accenture’s CFO and Enterprise Value network. “Not only do finance leaders need to outmaneuver uncertainty, but also leverage an intelligent finance operating model that draws upon data, applied intelligence, digital technologies and human talent to give them the speed they need to make the enterprise succeed.”

While these advantages are well-known, finance leaders also face a variety of challenges in implementing these processes. For example, real-time scenario planning topped the list of CFO priorities for 2021 (cited by 34% of respondents), but 58% of respondents expressed concern about identifying or hiring the right talent to implement this capability. While roughly a fourth (24%) of respondents cited real-time insights as highest priority for their company’s finance function, roughly two-fifths (43%) believe that technology is the most significant barrier to implementation, with slightly fewer (39%) citing the same for strategy know-how. Technology was also seen as a barrier to implementing continuous close (43%) and continuous accounting (40%).

“Implementing real-time processes isn’t easy, but CFOs today must move at the pace of their business to minimize risk and uncertainty and open up new opportunities for business growth,” said Manoj Shroff, who leads Accenture’s intelligent finance operations offering. “By embracing change and pivoting to intelligent operations, the role of the finance function is increasingly elevated while positioning the company for growth.”

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“We’re at the beginning of a new movement in personal cyber insurance,” said Kenneth Saldanha, who leads Accenture’s Insurance industry group globally. “The pandemic had a profound impact on customers’ lives, which will likely realign their expectations of insurers to help them in a more vulnerable and digital world. Insurers are reimagining their role in their customers’ lives by helping them deal with cyber incidents and build on their long-standing trust with customers to ensure them that they feel their identity and personal data are protected.”

“With more people now working remotely, insurers must protect their customers’ homes not just as physical assets, but as digital assets as well,” Saldanha said. “Insurers should play an active role in helping prevent cyber threats in the first place. Consumers tell us they want to be rewarded for good behavior and have their premiums more accurately reflect how they live their lives and stay safe.”

“Consumers want to be in more control of their cashflow and feel that their insurer understands their new world,” Saldanha said. “While financial relief, like the rebates offered by U.S. auto insurers during the pandemic, had a positive influence on consumer perception of insurers’ performance during the crisis, insurers shouldn’t get caught in a race to the bottom war on price. The battle for the consumer still remains in offering trusted, personalized customer experiences, adapting to new risks, and really being there for them to protect their best interests.”

The post Most Consumers Want Insurers to Handle Personal Cyber Threats as Pandemic Drives Digital Consumption appeared first on Digital IT News.

“Advancement leaders in 2020 acknowledged the need reassess our true North. The tried and true methods we used in the past to secure philanthropic support for our nonprofit organizations must adapt and innovate,” said Reed Sheard, Ed.D, CIO and Vice President of Advancement for Westmont College and Chair of the AAAC. “Finding a new model for successful fundraising and artificial intelligence presents an incredible opportunity to move significant donor relationships forward at scale. I’m incredibly proud to present this year’s State of AI in Advancement report along with my fellow AAAC members because it lays the foundation for transformative change in our industry.”

During the COVID-19 crisis, the landscape of advancement changed dramatically. From staff and budget cuts to developing a new understanding of donor relations in a purely digital format, to reimagininig how to significantly grow new pipeline in order to offset revenue disruption — in many ways advancement professionals are increasingly being pushed to transform how fundraising operates. The 2020 AAAC State of AI in Advancement report specifically examines these industry shifts and finds that 82 percent of advancement professionals believe AI is a part of the long-term solution.

“This year, more than any other, advancement as a whole has been forced to face the uncomfortable and adapt to ensure future growth. The intersection with artificial intelligence is inevitable,” said Adam Martel, CEO of Gravyty and AAAC member. “This year’s State of AI in Advancement not only proves the leaders are already adopting AI to solve their largest challenges, it also is an amazing guide that shows three exciting areas where AI is yielding tangible results.”

The AAAC’s top-line findings from the 2020 State of AI in Advancement include:

AI adoption is becoming a priority

• 82% believe that AI will be part of the solution for challenges facing fundraising teams as a result of COVID-19
• 66% of nonprofit organizations are considering investment in new tools and technologies to address challenges as a result of COVID-19

There’s a new and accelerated need for workforce efficiency within advancement

• 73% of nonprofit organizations faced budget reductions and/or hiring freezes in 2020

New roles within advancement are emerging

• 62% believe that some personnel will be shifted to the role of a digital gift officer

As need for pipeline development grows, so does belief in AI

• 82% believe that AI can effectively prioritize and reach more prospects

The full AAAC 2020 State of AI in Advancement report is available here. The 2020 State of AI in Advancement report was compiled from the AAAC’s volunteer members. The data used for all sections of this report comes from surveys of advancement professionals conducted between March 3, 2020, and July 29, 2020. In total, 337 advancement professionals participated in these surveys.

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