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. 

The opportunity to launch your own website and join the ranks as a small business owner is an exciting new venture.  Before you begin to take a business online, it is helpful to understand that getting started means choosing both a domain name and a hosting provider.

GoDaddy shares the difference between a domain name and hosting, and how they work together to help get a business online.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is considered your business home and piece of real estate on the internet. Choosing and registering a domain name is critical to getting your business or idea online with increased visibility.  Most business owners try to choose a domain name that matches their business name, or one that aligns closely. 

A domain name needs to be memorable and different from other domain names on the internet.  With many names already taken on the internet, you may need to be creative, however, choose a name that is easy to remember and easily spelled. Many domain providers, including GoDaddy, have an online search tool on their website to help find domain names that are available.

If your desired domain name is already taken, you can consider choosing your business name with a different name extension.  For example, many websites have a .com extension at the end of their business name, however there are many other domain name extensions available today.  These can include sector based name extensions like .shop, .accountant, .plumbing, and .tv, which can help consumers know the business of your company.  Or you can consider a geography-based name extension like .ph or .sg, which tells your customers where you are located, as more consumers look to shop locally.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is a service that allows you to rent space on a server for your website and its contents. Think of your website as a collection of digital files that includes information; photos; videos; design elements and other types of content.  You need a space to store all these files, so people can visit your website, browse your pages, and make purchases day or night, by people from around the world.

This space is considered hosting and is offered by a variety of hosting providers. Hosting services are available in a variety of plans. It is important to choose a hosting plan that meets the needs of your business and can grow with you as your business grows.

It is important to keep your hosting plans up to date to help ensure that your domain name registration stays current.  You can consider automatic renewals for your domain name to help keep your business domain name registered to your business, and not picked up by the competition.

How do domain names and web hosting work together?

Knowing the difference between domain names and hosting is where many people get confused, but it isn’t complicated.  Think of your domain as a street address, guiding people to where your website lives online.  Hosting allows you to store the files that make up your site at that location (your domain name), so visitors have something to see.

If you’re new to domains and hosting, both are important and work together, so you may want to consider purchasing them together for the easiest user experience. Setting up with one provider can feel more streamlined, since everything is with one company, helping you reach audiences that can help your business grow.

To help make it easier, annual GoDaddy Hosting plans includes a custom domain name, and security protections.

What to look for in a hosting provider?

• Storage: For most small- to medium-sized business websites, a few gigabytes of storage may be sufficient. 
• Bandwidth: People with large websites who expect to attract many visitors require more bandwidth.
• Scalability: The option of having an automatic increase in storage/bandwidth in case of a large traffic spike on your site.
• Reliability: Look for a 99.9% uptime guarantee or better. A website that is frequently down can negatively impact your business growth.
• Security: options available for website SSL Certificate protections and for security monitoring for malware/virus protections.
• Backups: Some providers offer scheduled backups of your website content and store them as a part of the hosting plan chosen.
• Support: 24/7 customer support availability, so you can call for help at a time that works for you.
• Analytics tools for gathering information about your marketing efforts and your website use.
• Tools that allow you to integrate your website with your social media pages.

Now that you have a deeper understanding of what domain names and web hosting are, and how they work, you are better equipped to lay the foundations of your digital strategy, launch, and grow your business on the internet.