Karl Lankford, Lead Solutions Engineer EMEA, Bomgar, shares his views on the ways companies within Britain should be adapting their IT teams in order to safeguard against Brexit.
Britain, London in particular, has long been favoured as the business capital of Europe. While it’s unlikely that this accolade will change dramatically in the future, the speculation around Brexit has certainly shaken the crown of European business. According to recent news, many businesses are choosing to expand operations in Dublin rather than London ahead of Brexit and even Panasonic has announced that it’s moving its European headquarters from the UK to Amsterdam.
Although some debates reflect a counter view to this, many enterprises are factoring in contingency plans such as creating satellite offices in Europe, considering greater travel between countries, or are simply considering relocating. While these decisions may address concerns around Brexit, moving staff around and increasing the number of locations and remote workers can pose challenges to IT and helpdesk teams.
Enabling mobility
Any relocation plans or new office locations will require IT teams to act as the nerve centre that ensures business continuity is maintained. IT heads will be under pressure to ensure business systems can support an increase in cross-border employee mobility across diverse devices and platforms without compromising on security.
Employees that are ‘on-the-go’ or working in a smaller office environment without onsite IT support can be guilty of not making cybersecurity front and centre of their day-to-day processes. However, as threats to organisations continue to grow, there will be a greater need to increase security around mobile workers and devices. In addition, UK businesses will still be required to comply with EU regulations including GDPR and these will need to be considered in a post-Brexit environment.
With remote access being a primary attack vector for cybercriminals, using unsecure tools to gain access to systems and devices used by mobile and remote employees can open up vulnerabilities in an organisation’s network which can easily be exploited. As such, support desks should make sure they are using tools that offer enhanced security features including ones that encrypt remote connections and eliminate the need for VPNs or firewall changes. By providing these tools, IT teams can ensure that they are meeting these new demands in the market and can deliver the increased security required.
An opportunity for the help desk
With the implementation of Brexit only months away, IT and helpdesk teams should see this as an opportunity to capitalise on increasing the use of remote support. This can deliver many benefits to remote and dispersed workers including quick first call resolution rates and a great customer experience.
In the post-Brexit scenario of a fragmented European workforce, this also means factoring in comprehensive multi-lingual remote access support. IT administrators and platform-based instructions will require some amount of native language capabilities to communicate clearly. By being able to provide this service, support teams that meet these requirements will find themselves succeeding.
Brexit has the potential to make an already mobile workforce even more remote but IT teams have the chance to make sure this change is as seamless and unified as possible. With security and compliance high on the agenda and maintaining business continuity crucial, IT teams will need to ensure that they deliver a secure and efficient remote support service to guarantee that the mobilisation of Brexit becomes a positive opportunity.
