Samir Sayed, Managing Director for ASEAN, Korea, Emerging Markets & Pakistan for Hybrid Work Solutions at HP says “The shift to hybrid work was so abrupt, we’ve not really considered how our behaviour should change to accommodate this new way of working. Should we be amending our behaviour to make hybrid work and hybrid meetings feel more normal? Thinking about how to make hybrid meetings feel more natural will create an equal meeting experience, whether people are in the room or dialling-in from home, which can come down to employers providing staff with the right technology and training.”  

“With people increasingly splitting their time between the office and home, how we conduct ourselves at work has changed drastically,” says Liz Wyse, Etiquette Advisor at Debrett’s. “It is clear that hybrid working offers many benefits, including greater flexibility and a better work-life balance. However, that’s not an excuse to let etiquette slip, and standards should stay the same regardless of where you’re working from. What’s the dress code when working from home? How do you eliminate distractions and present a professional façade online? This guide seeks to answer these questions so that both staff and employers can get the most out of a hybrid working arrangement.” 

The comprehensive guide offers insight into everything from how to behave on video calls and how to dress yourself and your background, to body language tips and the importance of eliminating distractions. Key takeaways include: 

1. Give a Royal wave: Ending a video call can sometimes feel a bit awkward. To make calls feel more friendly and inclusive, you can soften the abrupt finality of pressing ‘End call’ by giving colleagues a wave goodbye. 
2. Avoid video motion sickness: Stay in a fixed position during video calls. Carrying your device while you answer the door or wander around the office during video calls risks giving your colleagues a bad dose of motion sickness. 
3. No meeting munchies: You should try to avoid eating – you don’t want people to focus on the contents of your lunch rather than what you’re saying. It’s preferable to eat before you join a meeting. 

4. Beware the danger of diversions: Your home is full of diversions. Be it domestic chores, the garden or visits to the fridge – it’s all too easy to wander around doing jobs or making snacks, which ultimately distracts you from your job and impacts your productivity. 
5. Eliminate virtual background clutter: Indulge in a little set-dressing before your call. Evaluate your video background. Try to eliminate chaotic bookshelves, discarded clothing, empty take-away containers and distracting artwork. You want your colleagues to focus on you, not your background. 
6. Say no to stoic sickness syndrome: Do not struggle into the office if you have got a cough or cold or anything contagious. Nobody will applaud your stoicism. 
7. No meeting multitasking: It’s inappropriate to multitask during meetings – for example looking at your phone. It is also very bad form to carry on working while on a call; everybody will realise your mind is elsewhere and hear the incriminating clatter of your keyboard.  
8. Mute your work mates: Noise in the office can be distracting when joining calls. It’s quite acceptable to politely ask your colleagues to keep their voices down and to turn down their radio or music. 

9. Dress for success: People will choose to wear more relaxed, comfortable clothing when working from home, but it’s important to be aware of the psychological impact of truly letting yourself go. Aim to dress as if you are in the room with other meeting attendees.  
10. Embrace long pauses: Don’t be alarmed by long pauses during meetings and scramble to fill them with chatter; they are an invaluable way of giving people space to interject or expound. 

Looking ahead, instead of giving everyone the same equipment, organisations should understand how people like to work and collaborate, and the spaces they use – including their home office setup. This can be used to tailor the equipment provided, allowing employees to look their best, be heard, feel included and avoid distraction, irrespective of where they’re working from.  

To learn more about the new etiquette for hybrid work, please click here. An infographic can also be found here. 

Is your business still counting on your general IT team to handle an entire spectrum of cybersecurity issues? If you do, it might be time for a change.  

If lack of budget is one of the top reasons your business is in status quo despite the danger of security breaches, the more you may need to consider getting on board a managed security service provider (MSSP).

What exactly is a managed security service provider (MSSP)?

Today, companies of all sizes go to a managed service provider or MSP for extra hands to support different business areas, such as payroll and HR. This is the usual route taken by businesses in the midst of growth where systems have to be implemented quickly but internal resources and expertise are lacking. With information security becoming a growing concern, services now also include management of IT services and infrastructure. In other words, an MSP is a third party for businesses maintenance services. 

A managed security service provider (MSSP) is of a different breed because it focuses on cybersecurity. The first job of an MSSP is to help with the process of keeping a company’s critical systems and highly sensitive information secure while understanding the client’s concerns and showing them how to overcome it. Large organizations with diverse in-house staff of IT experts but need specialized help with a whole range of cybersecurity outsource an MSSP. 

For companies requiring round-the-clock monitoring, an MSSP is a suitable alternative to a security operation center (SOC), which requires at least nine people to operate 24/7. An MSSP is designed to reduce the number of operational security personnel that an enterprise needs to hire, train, and retain. 

In a post-pandemic environment, planning for contingencies and considering the uncertainties of the future are what will ultimately spell the difference between surviving and thriving among businesses. 

Gartner projected that by 2023, the widespread adoption of advanced technologies will see a jump from less than 15% today to 75% of organizations restructuring their risk and security governance.

To understand how organizations have responded to their pandemic-related challenges so far, Kaspersky has surveyed businesses of different sizes in 26 countries in September 2022.

Results of the survey are collected in the latest Kaspersky IT Security Economics Report where respondents in Southeast Asia shared their current setup when it comes to managing the IT security of their organizations. 

In using MSSPs to fulfill their IT security needs, SEA businesses admitted to be enjoying the following benefits:

1. IT teams doing more with less. SEA companies appear to be placing a premium on getting access to extensive knowledge and resources from outsider-cybersecurity technology pros. 

Some 55.8% of these companies said MSSPs provide special expertise, 54.7% are helping them meet compliance requirements and reduce regulatory risks for them, and 50.4% realized that MSSPs are taking the complexity out of business processes. They believe that partnering with MSSPs is a shot in the arm for their internal IT crews with all the resources and skills they bring to the table. 

2. Cutting costs. This is one of the biggest benefits of MSSPs for 49.4% of companies in the region. Keeping a roster of highly specialized cybersecurity experts in-house is expensive for every company of every type and size. Engaging an MSSP could reduce HR expenses and up-front IT security costs such as huge spending on full-time staff, rigorous protection measures as well as staff training and awareness. 

Businesses are now beginning to look at security as an operational expense, taking into account the cost of suffering a breach such as a hacked database, costly downtime, customer losses, and reputational damage that could seriously hurt the bottom line. 

3. Scalability. SEA respondents (48.5%) have found that working with MSSPs is helping their organization become flexible in terms of changing requirements. They can add resources in increments or only for a certain period of time.   

“Recall how the usual ways of doing business were impacted during the pandemic years. We have seen how physical offices and stores shut down, employees suddenly dispersed to work remotely, and customers forced to transact everything online. We were also witnesses to how cybercriminals took advantage of the unprepared world, unleashing a surge of cyber attacks of various kinds,” says Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky. 

“From their pandemic experience, decision makers of thriving businesses have learned to adapt to the new normal to stay in the game and be on the frontline for when opportunities arise. There is no other way but to grow and expand only if we change our mindset and shift our priorities,” he said. 

Kaspersky’s partner-MSSPs across Southeast Asia are at the disposal of companies that are considering turning to MSSPs to gain access to Kaspersky’s wealth of experience, expertise and comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity services and solutions, including threat intelligence, incident response, threat detection, malware research, and reverse engineering and digital forensics. 

To know more about Kaspersky’s Managed Service Provider Partnership, interested vendors can contact https://www.kaspersky.com/partners/managed-service-provider .

The full report Kaspersky IT Security Economics Report 2022 is available for download here. 

Digital transformation has substantially evolved in recent years, assisting many businesses and industries to recalibrate their operations to overcome the challenges and thrive post-pandemic.

Premier telecommunications company Eastern Communications believes that many companies have started embracing the concept of digitization. This belief is aligned with the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) research which reported that the Philippines improved in terms of competitiveness in shifting to digital technology as a catalyst for economic transformation. Providing increased efficiency and enhanced operations, digital transformation helps businesses drive growth through the pandemic aftermath and unforeseen economic situation.

To sustain this momentum and push forward, Eastern shares five key digital transformation trends to help Filipino businesses evolve every day in 2023.

1. Big shift to cloud computing

As anticipated, businesses are observed to shift more of their data to the cloud. In fact, according to Statista’s research, the revenue in the Philippines’ Public Cloud market is expected to reach ₱46.14-B (US$844.70-M) in 2023.

Eastern Communications encourages cloud computing adoption because it lowers IT operating costs, enhances the time-to-value and agility of business operations, reduces data loss, and fosters better organizational collaboration. The telco recently expanded its cloud portfolio, with Eastern Platform as a Service (PaaS), Eastern Cloud Virtual Router, and SGX Confidential Computing offerings, and it will welcome more cloud advancements in 2023. Discover the latest Cloud offerings from Eastern Communications here.

2. Remote working and hybrid network

The pandemic has enabled businesses to adapt hybrid and remote work setups resulting in location convenience, cost efficiency, and employee flexibility and safety. Thus, requiring more reliable connectivity and hybrid network solution providers to ensure that stakeholders can simultaneously access data across devices and locations.

With the advent of remote work, there is a need for alternative connectivity solutions to cater to far-flung areas across the Philippines. Eastern offers its Teleworker Gateway solution which offers a secure, office-like experience at home with WIFI that is always connected, and its Internet via Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) product, to serve a reliable internet connection wherever you may be via satellite technology.

  3. Enhanced cybersecurity

With the rapid rate of digitization in the country, cyber threats will conversely continue to grow exponentially, incurring the demand for increased cybersecurity protection. According to research by Tessian, cyberattacks aggressively increased over the past 12 months in 2021. Cybersecurity awareness is critical to prevent the onslaught of threats and attacks.

Eastern believes that evolving cybersecurity measures are critical in combating rapidly advancing cyberattacks. From being the first telco provider to offer the all-in-one enterprise and connectivity solution Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) in 2021, Eastern intends to launch more flexible solutions and grow into a stronger Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) in the future.

4. The rise of artificial intelligence

Within the last decade, Artificial Intelligence or AI has become a relevant topic when it comes to technological trends. AI is efficient and effective in creating new business opportunities in the digital age and better services including shorter turnaround time, reduced errors, and personalized AI-to-customer interactions.

As it saw tremendous developments in 2021, AI and machine learning also became huge trends in Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud security services as these facilitated automated threat detection. Based on FinancesOnline, the popular SaaS currently represents the largest world market segment for public cloud service and is expected to reach $623 billion by this year at a compound annual growth rate of 18%. Eastern Communications will continue to develop its SaaS products in the future to assist businesses in adapting to the ever-evolving digital environment.

5. Future in the metaverse

The Metaverse refers to an expansive and immersive future vision of the internet. In particular, the metaverse is the vision of a digital universe that exists alongside and seamlessly blends with our actual universe.

The adoption of the Metaverse enables businesses to take work, recreation, shopping, and socializing to a whole new level. Highlighting several sectors such as finance, real estate, construction, and retail, metaverse can improve employee and client experiences by transforming traditional business processes into immersive ones.

Evolve your business with Eastern Communications

Aside from these five key trends, it is important to note that you should choose a dependable and trusted partner to help you in achieving your objectives and grow your business this 2023. Eastern Communications has been a trusted connectivity and ICT solutions partner for numerous industries for over 140 years. It has grown into a world-class telecommunications and ICT solutions provider, offering an extensive portfolio of services that include Connectivity Solutions, Network Solutions, Security Solutions, Cloud and Data Center Solutions, and Business Applications. With the growing demand for digitalization, Eastern invites local businesses to go beyond their limits and accelerate their digital transformation journey this year.

To evolve your business this 2023, learn more about Eastern Communications’ business-grade products and services by visiting eastern.com.ph or following @easterncommph on Facebook.