From crisis to continuity: Securing remote work for the long term

At the end of April 2020, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella famously proclaimed that — as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns and the sudden shift to remote work — the world had undergone two years’ worth of digital transformation in just two months.

For cloud vendors like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and others, and for all those championing the undeniable benefits of cloud migration, this was something to celebrate, a silver lining around the dark-grey clouds of a deadly virus running rampant.

But for most organizations, this sudden transformation was not experienced as the wonderful realization of a long-held dream, but rather a slightly mad scramble to keep the lights on and avoid complete operational collapse while changing everything about how work gets done.

Imperfect migration

Now that we’ve had nearly two years to settle into the new landscape of work, it’s possible to look back and recognize that the sudden, wrenching acceleration of digital transformation resulted, for most organizations, in what’s being called “imperfect migration.”

This isn’t surprising, of course. With so many moving parts, the chances of transitioning to a fully remote, distributed workforce without creating any performance inefficiencies or any new security vulnerabilities were always pretty low. So, if you haven’t done it yet, now is definitely a great time to take a breath, step back, and determine where and how your organization can tighten up overall security and eliminate any gaps that may still exist. After all, the remote workforce is clearly not a short-term emergency measure, but just the reality of how business will get done for the foreseeable future.

Get the big picture, plus the details

A great starting point is to watch this half-hour webinar recorded in November. Entitled “The Evolution of Secure Hybrid Working,” it features Alex Hilton, CEO at Cloud Industry Forum, and Chris Hill, RVP Public & Cloud Alliance at Barracuda, in conversation. They cover a lot of ground in a short time, and their discussion ends up providing a useful framework for understanding how security threats have evolved over the course of the pandemic, what kinds of vulnerabilities are most common as a result of rapid cloud migration, and what technologies and strategies are now available to optimize both security and performance under the new paradigm.

Watch this wide-ranging, slide-free presentation and gain a deeper understanding of:

• Why the shortage of skilled IT resources demands a comprehensive, unified approach to secure remote work


• Why ransomware is not yesterday’s news, but rather continues to be the most dire security threat to businesses everywhere


• How the emergence of fifth-generation bad bots challenges traditional application security


• Why the web-application-firewall (WAF) solution sector is now the web-application-and-API-protection (WAAP) solution sector


• Why the advance from VPN to Zero Trust Access control is critical to protecting digital assets


• How today’s mature SASE strategies deliver both security and performance


• Why security awareness training continues to be a vital part of an effective security infrastructure

Did I mention that they cover a lot of ground? And that list doesn’t even include the discussion of how Barracuda undertook its own rapid transition to remote work, or how we’ve organized our business units for greater integration and cross-platform data-sharing to specifically address some of the challenges our customers face.

Taking stock in the new year

The past almost-two-years have been a heck of a wild ride. Most of us can look back at how we managed the chaos and give ourselves a pat on the back — we made it! But now it’s time to ease out of crisis mode and take stock of what came out of that time. To replace baling-wire-and-chewing-gum fixes that were good enough in an emergency with modern, fully capable solutions that will provide reliable performance and security for the long term. Watch this webinar to give yourself a clear idea of how to proceed.

Watch now