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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate change

Gartner on why CIOs need to replan their roadmap

Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

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Buyer’s guide to 5G mobile networking

Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

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Saving the world is a team effortCould wider application of the tech sector’s collaborative open source model help deliver the innovation required to curb climate change?

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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate change

Gartner on why CIOs need to replan their roadmap

Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to 5G mobile networking

Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

The security risks of bringing your own device to the office

Downtime

HMRC should boost data analytics capability, says NAO reportHM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) should focus on developing its data and analytics capability to better man-age tax debt through the pandemic, according to a report published by the National Audit Office (NAO). The report focuses on the wider eco-nomic impact of the pandemic, and the tax department’s decision to sus-pend most debt collection, which has led to large increases in the amount of tax owed to HMRC.

Post Office agrees to share privileged legal informationThe Post Office has agreed to waive professional privilege for documents required for the public inquiry into the Horizon computer scandal. The legal advice given to the Post Office during its wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters for financial crimes will be available to the public inquiry into the scandal. Inquiry chair Wyn Williams initially made the request at a hearing earlier this month.

Government proposes new rules for digital supply chain securityThe UK government has unveiled plans to boost the cyber security of the country’s digital supply chains with a series of measures that could include mandating IT service provid-ers to adhere to the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Assessment Framework. The proposals follow a Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport consultation on the issue of digital supply chains and third-party IT services, launched in May.

ONS data points to rise in UK tech employment for womenEmployment data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed that female professionals represented most of the professionals placed in the jobs market between July and September. According to the report, some 58,000 jobs were created in the information and communication category during the period, of which 41,000 (71%) of the professionals placed were women.

Royal Navy gets £100m electronic warfare boostThe Ministry of Defence has awarded a £100m contract through Defence Equipment and Support to deliver elec-tronic warfare to the Royal Navy. Under the Babcock-led partnership with Elbit Systems and QinetiQ, the electronic warfare sys-tems will aim to improve the simultane-ous detection and identification of radar signals over a greater frequency range than current capabilities. The technology is said to enable faster decision-making.

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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate change

Gartner on why CIOs need to replan their roadmap

Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to 5G mobile networking

Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

The security risks of bringing your own device to the office

Downtime

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Nvidia/Arm: Competitions and Markets Authority drills deeperDigital secretary Nadine Dorries has asked the Competition and Markets Authority to carry out a Phase 2 investigation into Nvidia’s takeover of Arm on national security and competition grounds.

General Motors restructures IT to develop $25bn software businessGeneral Motors has restructured its IT function to support its goal of growing software-enabled services revenue to $25bn a year by 2030. The IT role has been split into two, one focusing on back-office IT, the other a digital busi-ness software function.

National Infrastructure Commission pinpoints strategic gapsThe UK has made significant progress on its gigabit broadband roll-out and there is now wide reach of 4G mobile connectivity, but there is further to go to avoid any places being left behind, the National Infrastructure Commission has warned.

Cyber security startups line up on Cyber RunwayCyber startup specialist Plexal has announced that a total of 108 UK security startups are to join its accel-erator programme, designed to address some of the most pressing security challenges facing the UK.

Average size of hyperscale datacentres on the riseThe average size of a hyperscale data-centre is on the rise, with data sug-gesting the capacity of these supersize server farms has doubled in less than four years. Synergy has begun tracking the compute capacity contained in these hyperscale datacentres.

Vodafone announces solid first half-year resultsVodafone has released first half-year results showing solid advances in revenue, EBITDA and cash inflow, but with profits pegged back. For the six months ended 30 September, Vodafone announced total revenues of €22.49bn. n

One-fifth of cyber incidents supported by NCSC Covid-linkedAn attempted ransomware attack against University of Oxford researchers working on Covid-19 vaccine research was among hundreds of incidents thwarted with help from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

❯ Amazon to stop accepting Visa credit cards in UK.❯ Sky ECC provided Canadian police with cryptophones.❯ NHS Digital announces sustainability pledge.❯ Openreach in consultation over transition to fibre.

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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate change

Gartner on why CIOs need to replan their roadmap

Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to 5G mobile networking

Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

The security risks of bringing your own device to the office

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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate changePublic and private sector organisations need to pool their resources and collaborate to address the climate crisis by using open source technologies, urged Lord Maude during OpenUK’s COP26 event. Caroline Donnelly reports

Businesses and governments across the world could accel-erate their technological efforts to arrest the pace of cli-mate change by adopting open source-like ways of work-

ing, says ex-Cabinet Office minister Lord Maude of Horsham.Speaking to Computer Weekly at OpenUK’s COP26 fringe event

in Glasgow, Maude said taking an open, collaborative approach to tackling the urgent and complex issue of climate change would garner faster results compared with invested parties all trying to do their own thing.

By working together, organisations across the private and public sector could save huge amounts of time, energy and resources, and “unleash the innovation” needed to address the climate crisis, he said. “The open approach to technology makes its own con-tribution to energy conservation because you’re not constantly reinventing the wheel.

“The contribution that open can make through recycling ideas, encouraging collaboration, removing duplication of effort and replication – all of that can, in itself, be valuable.”

As defined by Maude during his keynote speech at the OpenUK Technology for Sustainability Day, taking an open approach to technology means companies making their software and hard-ware available to others to use and develop further over time.

“This community collaborative approach builds the community faster, encourages sharing and collaboration, and delivers high quality, rather than everyone trying to do their own thing,” he said. “Today, open source has led to the creation of some of the world’s most valuable technology companies. These are indications that open is now something of value.”

Much of Maude’s time at the Cabinet Office involved working on initiatives designed to help departments streamline their pro-cesses, become more efficient and transform the way they deliver public services.

Some of this work was delivered through the work of the coali-tion government’s Efficiency and Reform Group, which was oper-ational between 2010 and 2014 and is credited with helping to cut the government’s operating costs by £52bn.

ANALYSIS

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Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

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Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

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“We [the Cabinet Office] had inherited government IT that was the most expensive in the world, and I don’t want to boast, but also notorious for car-crash failures,” Maude told attendees. “We were ensnared in a spider’s web of huge, multi-year, impenetra-ble IT contracts with built-in dependence on proprietary prod-ucts and exclusive services provided by a pretty narrow group of multi-national vendors.”

Maude also had a hand in creating the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2011, which sought to revamp the way govern-ment services are provided to citizens by moving to a digital-by-default delivery model, underpinned wherever possible by open source technologies.

Creation of Gov.uk websiteOne of GDS’s landmark projects was the creation of the Gov.uk website, which provides a single, centralised hub where citizens can find information about government services.

As detailed in the keynote, the creation of Gov.uk paved the way for nearly 2,000 government websites to be removed from the web, making it easier for citizens to find the information they need. “We onboarded the whole of government onto a single website, built rigorously around the needs of the user,” said Maude.

“Built largely in-house with open source code and code that has been used by numerous other governments, each one – of course – developing and enhancing the code for the benefit of them-selves, but also for all of us.

“We broke open this closed system. We reformed how we pro-cured citizen IT and unleashed a vibrant ecosystem.”

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Lord Maude: “There is a real excitement around innovation, technological innovation and finding new ways to address climate change”

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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate change

Gartner on why CIOs need to replan their roadmap

Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to 5G mobile networking

Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

The security risks of bringing your own device to the office

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Maude also touched on another initiative embarked on during his time in government that was designed to eradicate the dupli-cation of IT resources at a datacentre level through the creation of the Cabinet Office’s private sector joint venture, Crown Hosting.

“One of the worst mischiefs we discovered lay in the opaque world of the government’s datacentre estate,” said Maude. “No one knew where they were, how many there were, their location and who – if anyone – controlled them.

“There was no coordination and hideously limited interoperabil-ity. There was absurd over-provisioning. Every department and agency – and often every part of every department and agency – had provided its own business continuity capacity. Unsurprisingly, in some parts of government, it emerged there was as much as 97% redundancy.”

Centralised hostinG environmentTo address this, Crown Hosting was launched in March 2015. The venture was intended to help government departments shutter their datacentres by providing them with a centralised hosting environment where all of their legacy, on-premise work-loads could reside.

“It was much more energy-efficient, much more financially effi-cient and it led to the eradication of vast swathes of redundancy,” said Maude. “So using this same approach – collaboration and communication, sharing, and recycling and reusing technology – is needed today around climate change.”

Maude’s comments on this point came ahead of the launch at OpenUK’s event of its carbon-negative datacentre blueprint,

Patchwork Kilt, which aims to encourage datacentre operators to recycle and refurbish their under-utilised datacentre equipment.

The blueprint is still a work in progress, and the idea is that the open source community will throw their weight behind the initia-tive and contribute their ideas about what can be done to make datacentres more energy efficient and environmentally friendly.

On a related point, during his interview with Computer Weekly, Maude said one of the defining characteristics of COP26 was the willingness of private sector organisations to get involved with doing what needs to be done from a technology perspective to address climate change.

time is runninG outOne reason for that, he said, is because time is running out to save the planet, which is why it is so important to pick up the pace of developing the technologies needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and hasten the renewable energy transition.

“What’s marking this COP out against previous ones is how the private sector has shown up, and how there is a real excitement around innovation, technological innovation and finding new ways to address climate change,” he told Computer Weekly.

“We’ve seen how the cost of renewables is plummeting com-pared with carbon, we’ve seen how new technologies are emerg-ing rapidly around electric vehicles, around carbon capture and the open approach to allowing and encouraging these technolo-gies to be more widely available. The greater the extent to which that can permeate through climate change, technological change and innovation, the quicker the results will come through.” n

ANALYSIS

❯OpenUK puts forward plan to reduce the environmental impact of datacentres.

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COP26: Lord Maude calls for use of open source tech to help fight climate change

Gartner on why CIOs need to replan their roadmap

Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategy

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Gartner: CIOs should replan their roadmapThe IT function has always been about gaining more efficiency by automating processes, but greater efficiency doesn’t lead to a step change in business outcomes – and that is what’s needed. Cliff Saran reports

IT leaders are being urged to consider how they take their role forward, as organisations develop business strategies that rely heavily on digital technologies. Gartner analysts say technol-

ogy could help CIOs gain freedom from historical insights, legacy business practices and bias.

Speaking during the opening keynote at the virtual Gartner Symposium conference, Daryl Plummer, distinguished research vice-president and Gartner fellow, said: “CIOs need to recon-sider how they think about value, and how they get to that value. They need a more expansive view of the role technology plays in doing so, and they must be bold to reach beyond the ‘where’ to discover freedom.”

The biggest change moving forward will be how IT is financed – not necessarily how much. “IT is transitioning from support-ing the business to being the business, which means spending on technology shifts from a cost of operations (selling, general and administrative) to a cost of revenue, or possibly cost of goods sold,” said John Lovelock, distinguished research vice-president at Gartner. “CIOs have a balancing act to perform – saving cash and expanding revenue.”

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Gartner says the biggest change moving forward will be how IT is financed – not

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Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

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Lovelock said 2022 would continue the evolution of IT, as busi-nesses adapt to a post-pandemic reality: “People have changed, but we are still social beings.”

This means people are unlikely to return to pre-Covid working patterns, where the majority of office workers commuted to an office daily. Whatever hybrid working becomes, Lovelock said the way content is shared and how collaboration takes place will be fundamental to the way the workplace evolves. For instance, older technologies such as digital whiteboards could be used to encourage collaboration.

However, he pointed out that there was also a need for asyn-chronous forms of collaboration, to enable people who work dif-ferent hours or are located in different time zones to participate in online meetings.

ChanGinG spendinG patternsAccording to Gartner’s latest spending forecast, enterprise soft-ware spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is estimated to have the highest growth in 2022, driven by the rise in cloud spending. Spending on software is set to grow by 10%, ahead of IT services, which Gartner has forecast will grow by 8.2%.

Gartner estimated that enterprise cloud spending would repre-sent 12.5% of total enterprise IT spending in 2022. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and desktop as a service (DaaS) are expected to be the two segments where EMEA organisations will increase their spending the most in 2022, achieving 32.3% and 31.1% growth, respectively.

Looking at IT buying habits, Lovelock said it was “seeing a fun-damental shift”. More organisations are moving from buying IT products to a service model. “Licence software sales are on a

decline and datacentre growth is flat for the next few years. The ownership model is going away,” he added.

While IT leaders have demonstrated their effectiveness at enabling business operations to continue during the pandemic, Lovelock warned that most companies would fall behind in terms of digital transformation. “They won’t be able to digitally trans-form,” he said.

hybrid approaChAny partial digital transformation leads to a hybrid approach, which, according to Lovelock, would widen the gap from similar organisations that have fully embraced digitisation. “Don’t do old processes with new technology,” he said.

Instead of looking at efficiency savings, Lovelock said IT lead-ers should think about how IT could enable the business to earn

ANALYSIS

Instead of lookIng at effIcIency savIngs, It leaders should thInk

about how It could enable the busIness to earn more money

❯Gartner: Pandemic pushed IT to top of the business agenda and integration is key.

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more money, instead of saving a dollar here and there through efficiency gains. “If you can earn the business a dollar, every-thing changes,” he said.

From an IT management perspective, larger organisations with substantial IT practices can be held back by the way they charge for internal services. This is known as chargeback. “This relies on older accounting practices,” said Lovelock. “Chargeback is a rea-son why IT doesn’t move as fast as it can.”

In Lovelock’s experience, companies are making generational decisions about technology. “Some of the projects that are hap-pening now are through partnerships with technology providers

that work with a client to develop a new business model,” he said. This changes IT’s relationship with the business. “The CIO’s career has been about providing a stable environment. Now the business wants IT to generate revenue,” added Lovelock.

His advice is similar to that given in a recent McKinsey article, which looked at how CIOs themselves need to change to help drive business change.

“CIOs need to make the leap from tech leader to business driver, and the actions they take in the next 12 months will largely deter-mine whether their business can meet its aspirations,” said Amer Baig, a senior partner at McKinsey. n

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Business expectations of IT have changed from providing a stable environment to revenue generation

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Shakespeare Martineau lays down the law for digital-fuelled growth strategyLaw firm Shakespeare Martineau is increasingly digitising its business and readying its infrastructure for future merger and acquisition activity, as Dal Virdi, the company’s IT director, tells Mark Samuels

Dal Virdi, IT director at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, took an unconventional route into technology manage-ment. While some of his contemporaries spent many

years striving to get into the CIO role, Virdi became technology chief at a point in his career when it seemed more likely he was going to leave the profession.

Virdi joined Shakespeare Martineau in March 2018 after leading strategy, architecture and engagement at another law firm, Irwin Mitchell. At the time, he was considering retirement, and wasn’t necessarily looking for another senior role. But then the opportu-nity at Shakespeare Martineau came up and everything changed.

“I guess I wasn’t prepared for taking it easy,” he says. “The role, initially, was in business engagement. But the interview for that position was stopped after about 10 minutes and they recognised that I was perhaps over-skilled for that engagement role. They asked me if I’d consider a different role within the firm.”

Shakespeare Martineau’s leadership team didn’t have a suitable vacancy at the time, but they felt Virdi possessed a set of skills

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Dal Virdi, Shakespeare Martineau: “I guess I wasn’t prepared for taking it easy”

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that were right for the organisation. He eventually joined in the position of strategic solutions manager. It was an opportunity to see what Virdi offered, and vice versa.

Within three months, the board were talking about Virdi becom-ing IT director – and by September 2018, he was leading technol-ogy for the firm. Three years on and he’s still enjoying the unex-pected test of being a CIO.

“Every day brings new challenges, so I do absolutely enjoy it,” he says. “I think the way the firm has grown, its ambitions, and the way that it tries to look after its people and encourages them to do more for the group, mean that it’s a great place to work.”

Shakespeare Martineau is a leading UK law firm, with more than 850 legal experts in offices across the country. The business has an ambitious growth strategy to more than double its size by 2025. The past decade has seen considerable growth for the firm, which has expanded through a number of acquisitions. The

size of the organisation doubled overnight when Shakespeares merged with SGH Martineau in 2015. However, the IT team at the time had not necessarily recognised the impact that this pro-cess would have on their systems and data. Virdi saw how his experience could help.

“The opportunity was around the fact that their IT landscape was quite backward, given the number of acquisitions they’d taken on and how they’d grown as a business,” he says. “They had a very functional IT team, but they didn’t necessarily know what other opportunities existed to help develop the firm with technology.

“I could see what was ahead of me in making a difference for the firm, and being able to elevate them to where they needed to be in order to be more competitive within the market, and to lay the foundations for what they were aspiring to be moving forward.”

stronG family feelDuring his three years as technology chief, Virdi has brought a range of people into the organisation, including IT professionals he had worked with in his previous roles. He says Shakespeare Martineau retained a strong family feel, despite its growth, and the board was keen to make the changes to IT that would help the firm move in the right direction.

“Everybody was supporting each other, everybody recognised the need to do things differently and everybody wanted to improve in lots of different ways,” he says. “That family feel and supportive culture makes a real difference and I’ve loved my time at the firm.”

As IT director, Virdi’s primary responsibilities concern the devel-opment and management of digital strategy, and technological

INTERVIEW

“we’ve gone from an envIronment that used to have

sIgnIfIcant outages to a servIce that’s gone at least 200 days wIthout a sIgnIfIcant outage”

Dal VirDi, ShakeSpeare Martineau

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oversight and governance for all technical solutions across the firm, including IT-related merger and acquisition activities.

He has introduced strong disciplines within the IT organisation in recent years, such as a focus on change management. Virdi has been able to embed a fresh cultural approach that means the IT team now considers how its work will have a greater impact on business operations, particularly in terms of generating value.

“One of the key streams that we are most proud of is that we’ve gone from an environment that used to have quite significant out-ages to a service that’s gone at least 200 days without a signifi-cant outage, and I think the last outage that we actually had was down to somebody accidentally tripping over a cable that went into one of our Exchange servers,” he says.

strenGthen it seCurityVirdi says the IT team has continued to work hard to strengthen the IT security position of the firm. For example, the team worked with consultant PwC to conduct a full maturity assess-ment of technology across the organisation. That process helped to show the board how new investment in IT security would help improve the firm’s position, says Virdi. “We’ve had the support over the last couple of years to build a cyber security awareness programme and to create continuous improvement,” he adds.

The final big area of work during the past three years involves addressing system complexity. Virdi says Shakespeare Martineau’s acquisitions created a fragmented landscape of legacy systems, with limited support and documentation. The IT team encour-aged the business to start addressing this issue.

“That was about getting everybody to understand what we needed to do differently,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, we’ve not exposed all of the skeletons – we are still finding things that people didn’t know about. But at least we’re much better placed to have that level of agility, with the knowledge that we have on all the peripheral systems.”

Virdi says one of his most critical decisions was to overhaul the firm’s IT infrastructure and introduce a Nutanix private cloud platform. He says the hyper-converged infrastructure offers the capabilities of a cloud-first strategy combined with the security, performance and compliance needed from an on-premise private cloud solution. “We’ve emphasised the fact that our internal and external clients are absolutely key. We always need to consider the services we’re delivering, internally and externally – and we need to keep the firm on its feet. Without the firm operating prop-erly, there’s going to be a big impact on revenues and reputation.”

Virdi says overcoming the challenges associated with Covid-19 has provided further evidence of the benefits of technology. The IT team was able to deploy laptops with a full VPN and managed

“we’ve not exposed all of the skeletons – we stIll fInd thIngs that people dIdn’t know about”

Dal VirDi, ShakeSpeare Martineau

INTERVIEW

❯Johnson Matthey CIO Paul Coby is working to create an agile IT department.

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desktop capability. This meant remote employees could still work from home through the applications they traditionally used in an office environment. Virdi says this shift has changed how the organisation perceives flexible working.

“What we’re looking to provide is for people to work in the com-fort of their own personal ecosystem,” he says. “So to be able to work securely, but have access to all of their applications from any device that they would choose to use at any point in the work-ing day. Culturally, the firm encourages people to work flexibly – they’re allowed to just do what they need to, when they want to, so that they can balance their work and home lives.”

flexible workinG praCtiCesThis adoption of flexible working practices is also affecting how the firm views digital transformation. Many of the IT pro-grammes that Virdi and his colleagues are introducing – such as new practice and case management systems – are about sup-porting an organisational design that is agile and flexible.

“That is absolutely front and centre in terms of our focus as an IT team, and that’s what we’re designing – and we’re look-ing to deploy the platforms and the frameworks to support that approach before the end of this calendar year,” he says, suggest-ing that the tech they introduce will help Shakespeare Martineau to absorb any newly acquired firms much more easily than before.

“We can onboard some of those mergers, so that they’ve got collaboration capabilities with the rest of the firm, but still allow a level of autonomy. We are also introducing lots of common and shared services that we’ll use across the entire group. We want to

give the firm the agility it requires and support the different ways that people will want to operate.”

Virdi says his team is focused on helping the firm to stay sensi-tive to the data it holds. They are working with external partners to create a continual improvement programme that will help the firm move into the digital world in a secure manner.

“That might mean introducing different microservices based on all of the internal capabilities and services that the business deliv-ers as a law firm, and then being able to pick and choose those microservices to create the capabilities that we want to provide to other entities that come into the group,” he says.

Virdi says this expansion process could also see Shakespeare Martineau increasing its remit beyond law. “We need to have that level of autonomy to be able to take on different shapes and sizes of entities that we’re looking to bring into the group to strengthen the cumulative capability of the business,” he says.

diGitised platform of the futureMany of the initiatives the IT team is working on, which include working very closely with Microsoft, are focused on creating what Virdi calls the “digitised platform of the future”. He says the firm’s close working relationship with Microsoft means the IT team is presented with fresh and pioneering opportunities.

“That helps us collaborate with them, do things in a different way, but also try to lead the way from a legal perspective. That has been a personal aspiration for all of us. We don’t just want to be one of the sheep in the flock. We want to be able to do things differently, to introduce advantage to the firm and the group.” n

INTERVIEW

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We need to know when it’s time to log off

In an article for The Guardian newspaper, Ana Catarina Mendes, parliamentary leader of the Portuguese Socialist party, discussed “the right to switch off”. As a result of the campaign run by her party, the Portuguese parliament has banned company chiefs from contacting employees outside normal working hours.

Since the days of the BlackBerry smartphone, people have been able to connect to work email from anywhere and, significantly, at any time. As many have found, this leads to a culture where people send email messages at any time, day or night. And recipients feel like they may as well respond. Unlike its predecessor, the pager, messages sent out of office hours to a recipient’s smartphone are usually not a last resort – an emergency that needs immediate attention. The device will receive all messages, irrespective of urgency.

During the pandemic, people who could work from home have been able to communicate and collaborate with colleagues over email and on conference calls. Email can be managed asynchronously, allowing people to respond when conven-ient. But conference calls are set for a specific time in one timezone. Those outside that timezone may need to tune in during the night or in the early hours of the morning. Certainly, these calls do not often fit in with everyone’s normal working day. It is the same with external events that try to reach a global audience. Usually, the time when the event runs is only convenient for a subset of delegates living in the timezone the event organiser feels would capture the largest online audience.

Communications should be encouraged globally, but as Computer Weekly reported in a recent talk with global pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, by not accounting for the differences in timezones and culture, a company risks being non-inclusive. The weekend does not start on Friday evening for everyone; much of the Middle East recognises it on different days. Labor Day and Thanksgiving are not UK national holidays, but people working with the US recognise that they won’t get a response to an email during the US holiday season.

Portugal’s new legislation is something that may be adopted elsewhere as trade unions, opposition parties and governments start to recognise the implications of a hybrid work pattern. As always, tech has a role to play in encoding these rules into the software we use. n

Cliff Saran, managing editor (technology)

❯Read the latest Computer Weekly blogs.

EDITOR’S COMMENT

by not accountIng for the dIfferences In tImezones and culture, a company

rIsks beIng non-InclusIve

Computer Weekly, 25 Christopher Street,

London EC2A 2BS

Telephone: 020 7186 1400

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At the beginning of 2020, as the full horror and scope of the world of Covid-19 was becoming apparent, many were worried about the prospects for advanced com-munications networks. What if the pandemic brought

to a grinding halt the build-out of 5G network infrastructure? If people were forced to stay at home and not travel, what would become of mobile telecoms services? And in the world of Wi-Fi, what would happen to Wi-Fi 6 development if the places for which it was designed were closed?

With the benefit of hindsight 20 months later, these worst nightmares never came to pass. Instead, the wireless industry has been propelled by an increased user dependence on perva-sive advanced communications to support work, education and leisure. Not only have the experiences of such activities been improved by the expanded deployment of next-generation wire-less infrastructures, but the networks are also enabling them to be carried out in a much more environmentally friendly way.

So where exactly does the 5G industry stand right now? Aggregating the forecasts and projections of leading analysts and suppliers, the past two years have seen the rapid development of 5G, with more than 170 networks built and nearly 500 million users switching on to the networks across the world.

But despite the rapid growth to date, access to 5G services has been a case of finding a 5G hotspot to log onto. Yet, in a recent speech at the 12th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF), Yang Chaobin, president of Huawei Wireless Solution, said changes in user behaviour and industry digitisation were placing higher requirements on 5G and he proposed that the next logical step for

Launch into the future with advanced communications

Advanced communications not only connect the real world to the digital world, but they also enable a hybrid and more

environmentally friendly world of work. Joe O’Halloran reports

BUYER’S GUIDE TO 5G MOBILE NETWORKING | PART 2 OF 3

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the comms industry is to evolve 5G to build a ubiquitous gigabit network and what Huawei calls a “5Gigaverse society”.

explosion of wireless usage Yang noted that in the context of fixed wireless access (FWA), the number of wireless users now exceeds that of wired users and 5G traffic has increased by three times compared with that of 4G as video services grow. For Yang, this means the industry should expect that by 2030, mobile networks will carry more traffic than wired networks and become the main bearer of internet traffic.

In the light of these trends, said Yang, great progress has been made in industry digitisation, with 5G enabling more than 10,000 scenar-ios in over 20 industries worldwide. He believes that in the future, 5G capabilities will continue to evolve to incorporate fragmented connections in various industries, creating an internet of things (IoT) with hundreds of billions of connections.

Looking at how the “5Gigaverse” is likely to be delivered, Yang pointed to massive MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) and ultra-wideband mobile services to maximise macro coverage and capacity. According to Yang, two years of commercial 5G deploy-ment have proved that the massive MIMO and ultra-wideband

technologies can improve user experience by 10 times and have become the choice of most operators around the world.

He said macro sites currently account for up to 45% of opera-tors’ investment in network construction, and so how to maximise macro capacity and coverage is a top concern. He added that he is confident that in the forthcoming decade of 5G, innovation will never stop and the industry will continue to evolve and innovate

towards 5.5G. “We hope to work with global partners to continuously innovate based on user experience and industry requirements to take user experience to new heights while digitally transforming industries.”

In the UK, three companies – Hado UK, Epitomical and Cambridge Sensoriis – are using Cambridge Wireless’s CW 5G Testbed to test the potential of 5G in real-world applications. Such dedicated wire-less infrastructures, which offer

company-specific wireless spectrum, are seeing rapid growth across Europe.

“5G private network testbeds are an essential addition to the UK’s R&D offering, enabling SMEs to integrate 5G technology at speed, to overcome issues promptly and get a more advanced product to market ahead of their competition,” says Cambridge Wireless CEO Simon Mead. “An engineering team can customise a private network such as the CW 5G Testbed to its needs, access

“we hope to work wIth global partners to contInuously

Innovate to take user experIence to new heIghts whIle dIgItally

transformIng IndustrIes”Yang Chaobin, huawei wireleSS Solution

BUYER’S GUIDE

computerweekly.com 23-29 November 2021 17

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the full range of 5G features and test a variety of connectivity sce-narios, rather than depending on the more limited features and bandwidth typical of a public network.”

Hado UK is the developer and distributor of an augmented reality-based e-sport that allows support teams to play each other remotely, which means a European international match can be held without any player boarding a plane.

Cambridge Sensoriis is described as an expert in radar tech-nology and through 5G, it aims to bring a new level of safety to the UK’s roads and skies with a cloud computing system that can position, track and monitor moving vehicles to an accuracy of a few centimetres.

Epitomical is the designer of autonomous connected vehicle Autorover, which is said to be transforming critical workers’ abil-ity to perform tasks in dangerous environments thanks to real-time teleoperations and a robotic arm from Extend Robotics on its 5G-enabled mobile rover platform.

campus networkingAlmost due east across the Fens and North Sea, global opera-tor Orange has accelerated its development of 5G products and services with a dedicated 5G standalone (SA) technology cam-pus at the Port of Antwerp, a flagship user of Orange 5G tech-nology and services.

BUYER’S GUIDE

Through 5G, Cambridge Sensoriis aims to bring a new level of safety to the UK’s roads and skies with a cloud computing system that can position, track and monitor moving vehicles to an accuracy of a few centimetres M

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Working to the stated principle that the most innovative aspect of next-generation mobile networks is what you do with one, the operator says businesses are increasingly expecting telecoms providers to not only offer connectivity, but also a broader range of services and guidance on new technologies.

At the new site in The Beacon, Antwerp, the operator will demonstrate the capabilities of the 5G standalone telecoms standard and how it will help companies to innovate and dig-itise operations. It consolidates the knowledge and expertise gath-ered from Orange Belgium on 5G Industry 4.0, as well as the initial co-innovation use cases delivered in the Port of Antwerp to help develop and test new and inspiring Industry 4.0 use cases.

The lab’s radio network is directly connected to the operator’s 5G core system, and to boost the development of 5G services when compatible hardware is still a potential gating factor, the Orange 5G Lab site hosts various types of certified 5G devices – such as routers, smartphones, tablets, smartglasses and cameras – that work on a 5G SA net-work and are tested and validated by Orange engineers.

At the opening of the site in October 2021, the operator dis-played a number of key use cases facilitated by its 5G network, including industrial robotics, autonomous vehicle safety in the context of enabling object detection on railway lines along

with autonomous driving of a host of vehicles, and emergency response using push-to-talk functionality.

For Werner De Laet, chief of enterprise, wholesale and innova-tion officer at Orange Belgium, the opening of the 5G Lab was an important step towards delivering concrete business value from the next-generation network.

“We have a strategic plan which we call Orange Ahead,” he says. “There’s one important pillar which is boosting the B2B

market, which is an important growth factor. Two years ago, we decided to not just speak about 5G, not to try to imagine what 5G could bring, but to just do it, and not do it alone, trying to create an ecosystem with companies that are next door to customers, partners and startups.”

An intrinsic part of the new 5G ecosystem will be multi-access

edge computing (MEC). US comms provider Verizon, for instance, went live in October 2021 to deliver a service for its enterprise customers in the US based on its private MEC offer-ing integrated with AWS Outposts, to offer a cloud computing platform that brings compute and storage services to the edge of the network on the customer premises.

The partners guarantee that their combined system supports the massive bandwidth and low latency needed to support real-time enterprise applications such as intelligent logistics, factory

BUYER’S GUIDE

“two years ago, we decIded to not just speak about 5g,

not to try to ImagIne what 5g could brIng, but to just do It”

werner De laet, orange belgiuM

computerweekly.com 23-29 November 2021 19

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BUYER’S GUIDE

automation and robotics. Enterprises will have a dedicated infra-structure on-premise that is said to enable ultra-low latency, higher levels of security and deeper customisation.

scalability and tecHnical cHallengesDespite all the general optimism surrounding 5G and advanced wireless communications in general, there are a number of potential gating factors to development. Availability of essential hardware has been one and another key issue has been how to apportion the key 6GHz frequency range, sitting at the nexus of the mid-band 5G industry and the rapidly growing Wi-Fi 6/6E arena.

A September 2021 survey by the Wireless Broadband Alliance, the WBA annual industry report 2022, found that as many as 83% of communications service providers and equipment manufacturers and enterprises worldwide will have deployed Wi-Fi 6/6E, or plan to do so, before the end of 2022. The study revealed how 6GHz spectrum will enable Wi-Fi to support even more users and new use cases, such as time-sensitive network-ing (TSN) for Industry 4.0 applications. The survey also showed that almost three-fifths of respondents said 6GHz was critical or very important to their strategy.

The report also noted that 41 countries, representing 54% of the world’s GDP, have authorised 6GHz for use, while more than 338 million Wi-Fi 6E devices will enter the market in 2021, and nearly 20% of all Wi-Fi 6 device shipments will support 6GHz by 2022. WBA members were also shown to have a strong inter-est in the convergence of 5G and Wi-Fi 6, including how mobile

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Some countries and regions are sprinting towards 5G and the gains it can bring, others are strolling, and there are some where development is non-existent

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operators can use Wi-Fi as part of their 5G strategy in terms of maximising coverage and capacity.

climate benefitsBut it is not just business and industrial productivity that is benefiting from the accelerated roll-out of 5G connectivity – there is also the potential of it having a catalysing impact in reducing CO2 emissions.

A recent report published by Ericsson, Connectivity and climate change, outlined the potential for huge societal gains through establishing 5G infrastructures. It suggested that implementing 5G technology across four high-emitting sectors (power, trans-port, manufacturing and build-ings) could create 55-170 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) of emissions savings per year – the same saving that would be achieved by removing more than 35 million petrol cars from roads in the European Union (EU). It also calculated that at least 40% of the EU’s carbon reduction solutions, up until 2030, are likely to rely on fixed-line and mobile connectivity. These technologies, such as the development of renewable energy generators, could, suggested Ericsson, reduce the EU’s emissions by 550MtCO2e, equivalent to nearly half of the emissions created by the entire EU energy supply sector in

2017, and 15% of the EU’s total annual emissions in 2017 – the year chosen as a benchmark for the analysis.

Yet by 2027, just three years before global emissions will need to have halved to stay on track for 1.5ºC global warming, forecasts show that global 5G roll-out will still only be around 75%. North America and Northeast Asia are estimated to achieve more than 95% population coverage by 2027, but by contrast, Europe is esti-mated to be significantly behind its economic competitors, with about 80% population coverage.

The report concluded by warning that policymakers and regula-tors have a major role to play here by realising the competitive economic, social and sustainable potential of 5G and working speedily together to clear the associated practical, financial and regulatory obstacles that stand in the way of the prolif-eration of 5G and the resulting ben-efits in terms of reduced emissions.

Despite these challenges, the case for 5G appears to be rock solid. The

business and societal benefits for mass deployment are clear. But a hard reality is that the pace of adoption varies across the world. Some countries and regions are sprinting towards 5G and the gains that it can bring; others are strolling. And there are regions where development is non-existent. Such divergence needs to be resolved if the potential successes of the new post-Covid world and the experience economy are to be realised for all. n

BUYER’S GUIDE

at least 40% of the eu’s carbon reductIon

solutIons, up untIl 2030, are lIkely to rely on fIxed-lIne

and mobIle connectIvIty

computerweekly.com 23-29 November 2021 21

A round 75% of all companies have seen their supply chains disrupted by the Covid-19 coronavirus pan-demic, according to the US-based Institute of Supply Management (ISM), with many bracing to take a hit

or adjusting revenue targets downwards.But datacentre operators have mostly not been among them.

This is despite lead times for certain kit reportedly lengthening from weeks to months, in some cases. Meanwhile, initially bull-ish sales forecasts for Chinese-made hardware, such as servers or switches, may be revised down for some time, for a range of reasons not all to do with Covid-19.

Growth in the software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) market, targeting managed services provision, is still predicted. Datacentre traffic has been surging because of increased remote working on distributed communications across porous plat-forms – with all the security concerns for customer businesses that this entails.

But there could be further issues down the track. Omdia has forecast delays to emerging tech infrastructure deployments such as 5G, and around logistics, transportation, packaging and testing of kit – affecting construction projects, for example.

With somewhat mixed signals, it is tough to predict how far operators should be scrambling to reshape themselves for a “new normal” post-Covid-19. However, Devan Adams, princi-pal cloud and datacentre switching analyst at Omdia, has con-firmed that purchasing behaviour changes are “inevitable”, with “increased demand for internet bandwidth unable to compen-sate” for the pandemic’s negative impact.

hardening up datacentre equipment

suppLy chains after covid-19Fears about hardware shortages, staff absenteeism and how

to keep sites running with social distancing have dogged the datacentre sector since the start of the pandemic,

so how is the sector faring? Fleur Doidge reports

DATACENTRE LOGISTICS

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supply issues could continueJennifer Cooke, research director for cloud to edge datacentre trends and strategies at IDC, tells Computer Weekly that sup-ply could yet be delayed in the next few months, although it seems that larger, multi-tenant datacentres, which may find sourcing easier, can still get what they need.

“What datacentres are seeing, however, is a spike in demand for remote monitoring technology,” says Cooke. “Colocation providers that invested in these platforms are seeing customers log in and stay logged in for a lot longer, rely-ing on remote monitoring tools when being there in person is difficult or impossible.”

IDC analysis so far notes that while most supply chain organi-sations have already activated business continuity plans, these have mostly been designed for short-term, localised disruption. This suggests that business continuity planning could have to ramp up, targeting better visibility of supply chain capabilities at both ends, as well as the overall risk backdrop – making short-term adjustments where possible, and acquiring more external data through third parties.

Alternative supply sources should be located to guard against future production shutdowns, logistical constraints or custom disruptions. This might be about developing surge capacity

and alternative transport options (for example, sea instead of air), or substituting products – running scenarios where pos-sible to identify potential pain points. Luckily, operators mas-

sively expanded overall datacentre capacity between 2017 and 2019, and sufficiently optimised space, power and central connectivity has been available so far.

That said, IDC believes it could take a global effort to mitigate delays to datacentre construction. Facilities and last-mile bandwidth support to all end locations should be scrutinised. However, Covid-19 could accelerate the shift to service

provider-built or service provider-operated colocation and cloud facilities, with overall power and capacity expected to expand by 8-10% over the next five years.

monitoring amid social distancingAndy Lawrence, executive director of research at the Uptime Institute, highlights ongoing skill shortages amid a complex pic-ture around cloud migrations and risk perceptions that could negatively affect growth forecasts. Dealing with these issues will be key to successful future-proofing of the datacentre equip-ment supply chain.

“Covid-19’s impact has been about the things you would expect – dividing people into shifts, staff shortages, people having to

DATACENTRE LOGISTICS

whIle most supply chaIn organIsatIons have actIvated

busIness contInuIty plans, these have mostly been desIgned for

short-term, localIsed dIsruptIon

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Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

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be off work for self-isolation – but also deferring maintenance, which has caused a lot of worries,” says Lawrence.

“Just missing one service on a generator can affect your war-ranties, and even your permit. Industry is moving slowly that way anyway, but everyone we’ve spoken to says they’ll do more remote monitoring in future. One long-term change is having fewer people on site, instead of visitors all the time, all different companies, all there every day – a real issue in this crisis.”

Yet datacentres are expected to continue in an expansionary mode, for suppliers that get the situation in hand by sourcing appropriately amended, updated documentation and advice on maintenance delays.

With more automation, remote monitoring and condition-based monitoring, unexpected failures should become less likely. Instead of quarterly technician visits, say, remote sensors and monitors could be checking data against an analytics pro-gram, perhaps with artificial intelligence (AI), that reveals the likelihood of failure over the next 90 days.

As long as the security strategies keep pace in a more remote, automated, cloud-based world, datacentre operations could be well positioned for a post-Covid-19 future, says Lawrence.

“Datacentre management is religious about this kind of con-tinuity,” he adds. “The level of thinking they do is extraordinary – they really take a forensic engineering kind of view of every problem. I’ve been to datacentres where they have rooms with beds in, two weeks’ food supply and that kind of thing. They are ready for fires, floods and famine, because what they’re paid for is to keep the thing running at all times.

DATACENTRE LOGISTICS

As long as security keeps up to date, automation could make life easier for datacentre operators in

a post-Covid world

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“They keep critical parts on site, they usually have contracts that enable the key components to be delivered fast, and obvi-ously they have disaster recovery plans to move workloads to another site in extremis,” says Lawrence. “No one has ever seen an issue like this before, so they had to think on the fly, but they’ve done a good job on the whole.”

dual sourcing to stage comebackSome of the very large hyperscale datacentres, building as quickly and cheaply as possible with just-in-time manufactur-ing techniques, are talking about reintroducing dual sourcing for things such as IT facilities and spare parts.

This practice had been gradually abandoned over the past 20 years in favour of tighter supplier relationships, but it could reduce the risks that come with over-reliance on certain suppliers or segments of a supply chain. Might this be good news for some of the smaller suppliers out there?

“Yes, but what you hear peo-ple talking about and what people actually end up doing can differ,” says Lawrence. “It all has costs involved. Once the emergency is over, you might get that they aren’t making that change they thought about. It’s cheaper to have everything identical – but they are quite wary of that.”

Standardisation in the datacentre has been talked about for decades, he says, but has mostly been around the IT side, for

racks, servers, and so on. When it comes to instrumentation, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or integration of software components, cooling systems or building management soft-ware, suppliers haven’t really wanted to open up.

“They’re quite proprietary,” says Lawrence. “It usually takes disruptive new suppliers or very powerful buyers to drive change, because they tend to go their own way and they tell the suppli-ers what they want. So if that happens, it will probably come through the likes of Google or Amazon.”

He agrees that having more remote working has largely worked well, not least by smoothing out daily workload pat-terns that previously saw large cyclical peaks and troughs of demand. But new risks must be accounted for and customers

assured of service delivery.This means service-level agree-

ments (SLAs) and contracts should all be looked at again, and with the customer’s requirements more in mind, rather than the defence of the service provider. Non-critical systems could become “must-haves” as a result.

“An example might be a ticketing system at an airline,” says Lawrence. “It wasn’t built to be 24/7 critical, but now if you can’t use it, nothing happens. People will start to look at the end-to-end risk of that system. They may need to demonstrate that more. They won’t want people coming in all the time to check. Everyone needs to be looking at staffing issues. Think about

DATACENTRE LOGISTICS

“It usually takes dIsruptIve new supplIers or very powerful

buyers to drIve change”anDY lawrenCe, uptiMe inStitute

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Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

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operating with two teams, like at a nuclear plant, with sophis-ticated processes for changing from one team to another, and being able to do that for ever.”

View from tHe coalfaceSuppliers may be reluctant to provide comment that could be construed as guidance. However, Gabriel Bonilha, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) professional services manager at datacentre infrastructure provider Vertiv, largely agrees with Lawrence on many points.

He says: “The global supply chain has focused a lot on effi-ciency, but now we must pair it with very high levels of resiliency. We all want the best quality, price and lead times – not much news there. These challenges will ease after the pandemic, but how long will it take? And what about the next crisis to come along? No one can say.”

Considering where to localise manufacturing and assembly might help, along with continuous improvement across critical infrastructure servicing and maintenance, expanding and opti-mising to keep up with demand. The industry will need to do better around spares, logistics and dependencies – even though that is likely to require heavier investment in some areas. With that in mind, Bonilha notes that the pandemic presents an oppor-tunity to strike the balance between resiliency and efficiency.

Volker Ludwig, senior EMEA datacentres vice-president at tech services provider NTT, says his firm has not seen “long delays” in terms of infrastructure component delivery due to Covid-19 in the region.

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The supply chain must work on resiliency for the future to better prepare for demand, and to offset the

damage from any possible crisis yet to come

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Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains after Covid-19

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However, because datacentres are the “backbone of dig-itisation”, Ludwig says it is crucial that long lead times and expected build-out trajectories are well planned. Teams or partners must be able to reach the locations in question, and spare parts and maintenance must be available with adapt-ability built in.

“To manage risk, we work with a minimum of two, or ide-ally three, different suppliers per critical infrastructure compo-nent, such as generators, UPS and chillers, to make sure we are not dependent,” says Ludwig. “Covid-19 has also accelerated digitisa-tion in terms of how datacentre operators work. Where there were lots of people on-site, in particular for testing in commissioning, we now have very few staff present. Most are working remotely and participating through video.”

Paul Hohnsbeen, vice-president for EMEA IBX operations at global interconnection and data-centre firm Equinix, echoes many of these sentiments. He reit-erates that the pandemic has piled on the pressure, accelerat-ing digital trends from remote working to virtual events, online streaming and purchasing.

All these must be underpinned by shoring up critical datacen-tre operations, infrastructure and services, spurring change to working protocols and “creative planning” to keep operations

going, he says. Support services need to be redesigned not only for sudden capacity expansion, but to guide customers managing their digital infrastructure.

“Datacentre operators need a plan of action for when custom-ers readdress levels of usage as the world returns to a new kind of normal,” says Hohnsbeen. “What that will look like is yet to be seen. Support and advice from regional and national agencies have proven invaluable, and we have seen increased amounts

of useful information being freely shared by industry bodies and other datacentre operators. We must continue to share knowledge to assist with the new set of chal-lenges that customers will face during the recovery phase.”

adapt, but stay flexibleMark Daly, director at datacentre services provider Digital Realty, says the industry should benefit

from “valuable geopolitical learnings” about equipment sourc-ing and location in the short, medium and longer term – and he suggests that embedding sustainability and “greener” sourc-ing into specifications should become more top of mind.

“Sourcing critical items locally instead of in a lower-cost country may become more popular,” says Daly. “At the same time, the importance of having multiple sources for critical items has been highlighted. Post-Covid-19, a company not

DATACENTRE LOGISTICS

“we must contInue to share knowledge to assIst wIth the

new set of challenges that customers wIll face durIng

the recovery phase”paul hohnSbeen, equinix

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managing its supply chain will see longer lead times. Equally, multiple parties could be competing for the same resources, either from an equipment or resource perspective.”

Daly points out that many datacentre organisations could be ramping up at the same time, with similar pressures from deferred activity. “Working closely with all parties in advance of that ramp-up will be incredibly important,” he says.

Beyond the world of datacentres specifically, IT service man-agement company the Hackett Group has been looking closely at coronavirus impacts on business. Any supply chain com-pany post-Covid-19, the consultancy suggests, should, in the near term, optimise the design of its supply networks, as well as identify alternative supply scenarios incorporating multi-year cost and capacity modelling.

Hackett also recommends more focus on common, interop-erable platforms or technologies that can easily be adopted for different use cases or locations.

“Automate core processes, including order management, planning and scheduling; standardise processes across geog-raphies,” it says.

Final configurations should be delayed where possible, with outsourcing options ready to step into the breach, says the consultancy. Relationships should be analysed and managed to understand and enable rapid changes in business demand, with longer-term plans for different scenarios developed, even in the face of uncertainty.

But Hackett adds a caveat that is equally valid for datacentre operators: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” n D

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DATACENTRE LOGISTICS

Supply chain companies should look to optimise networks and consider

including risk scenarios into their annual costs

and business model

computerweekly.com 23-29 November 2021 28

M illions of people have begun heading back to the office after nearly two years of working from home. While the return of some office-based work-ing is a positive sign that the Covid-19 pandemic

is slowly coming to an end, some experts fear this could have significant cyber security implications for businesses.

The pandemic has seen vast numbers of people work remotely. And whether or not they had permission from their employers, many workers used personal mobile devices to stay in touch with bosses, colleagues, customers and other key stakeholders during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, consumer devices aren’t always protected by stringent cyber security defences like corporate electronics are, so they could potentially harbour malware and other security vulnerabilities. Even if employees only used corporate mobile devices for remote working, they would have been connected to personal Wi-Fi networks and could be less secure as a result.

Whatever the case, hundreds of thousands of mobile devices – many of which could be potentially insecure – are suddenly reconnecting to corporate networks. What are the risks of this? And how can firms mitigate them?

a cyber security pandemicThe influx of new devices joining corporate networks for the first time will result in major security problems for businesses, says ESET security specialist Jake Moore. “There is simply going to be a deluge of malware and bugs being transferred onto these once-secure platforms,” he says.

the security risks of bringing your own device to the officeWith many people returning to offices and bringing their mobile devices

with them, Nicholas Fearn assesses the cyber security implications

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To counter these threats, businesses must secure their corporate data and networks. But, says Moore, this requires multiple layers of security and the cooperation of everyone inside the organisa-tion. It shouldn’t just be left to cyber security teams to handle.

“Before you allow any non-company-owned devices onto the network, the data must be made secure, and if possible, separate with guest networks, secluded sensitive areas and access given to only those who require it,” he says. “If any third-party device enters the network, it is highly advised to ensure a robust, company-approved antivirus solution is on the device and scans are carried out before joining the network.”

full-disk encryptionBecause many employees use mobile devices today, there’s a risk that sensitive business data could get into the wrong hands when they’re taken outside the office. Moore explains that businesses can ensure that the data stored on mobile devices is secure when offsite through the use of full-disk encryption.

“This must be enforced as mandatory for any device which leaves the building,” he says. During the pandemic, many smartphones may have become compromised with serious cyber security vulnerabilities and will likely pose a threat to corporate networks as offices reopen. “The use of mobile app management can help network admins to be aware of what exactly is running

on their network and take advantage of being able to control mobile devices remotely,” says Moore.

bring-your-own-deVice fundamentals Modern businesses should already be aware of the cyber security challenges of employees using their own mobile devices on corporate networks because these issues existed long before the pandemic, according to Immersive Labs appli-

cation security lead Sean Wright. “This risk should already be cov-ered by a security policy and enforced by appropriate device management solutions,” he says.

But Wright believes that the return of employees to office-based working will likely test this to some degree, with more people resulting in a greater number of risk points. He says one of the best ways to

resolve this problem is by setting tight user permissions.Enterprises that allow employees to use their own mobile

devices on corporate networks should stress the importance of implementing security patches. “The really important factor here is patching,” says Wright. “With consumer devices increas-ingly vulnerable, the devices connecting to your network should be up to date.”

Another big consideration for firms with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives is to ensure personal mobile devices operate

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“before you allow any non-company-owned devIces onto the network, the data

must be made secure”Jake Moore, eSet

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on an isolated network, says Wright, adding: “The first thing an attacker will look to do is move laterally. This will deny them that opportunity.”

Andrew Hewitt, a senior analyst at Forrester, believes that the use of mobile devices on corporate Wi-Fi networks can be hazardous for organisations without a combination of device compliance, up-to-date certifications, and identity and access management (IAM) capabilities. “However, with a strong foundation of unified endpoint management and IAM, this is not likely to be a major issue,” he says.

He also urges businesses and professionals to be wary of SMS-based phishing attacks, which have risen exponentially in the pandemic. “You could imagine a hacker sending out what seems to be an emergency notification from an office building when in reality it’s a phishing attempt,” says Hewitt.

an influx of malwareMany businesses have allowed their employees to work on personal mobile devices over the past 18 months, but because consumer devices are typically less secure than corporate devices, they could have picked up all sorts of malware during this time and subsequently pose a danger to corporate secu-rity networks as offices reopen.

Martin Riley, director of managed security services at Bridewell Consulting, says: “As employees return to the office, there’s a risk they could be bringing compromised or less secure devices back on to the network, whether through the introduction of malicious apps or malware-infected devices.

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“A lot of organisations are also overconfident in their current mobile device management and security capabilities,” he says. “This is especially true if the organisation does not have a mature and integrated user device management capability to underpin enterprise mobility technologies.”

Riley says the biggest challenge that IT teams will likely face when dealing with these issues is to get the balance right. For example, enforcing lots of cyber security restrictions on mobile devices could potentially affect productivity and user experience. But on the other hand, a relaxed approach may leave businesses vulnerable to serious cyber security threats.

He says the right answer is to enforce a zero-trust security model so that no individual or device is trusted. “This means separat-ing users and devices as much as is reasonable for your business from corporate assets such as data, applications, infrastructure, and networks and following the Identify, Authenticate, Authorise and Audit model,” says Riley.

security awareness training With new online threats constantly emerging, there’s also an onus on organisations to provide their employees with security aware-ness training. says Riley. “It’s also vital that security responsibilities are not left in the hands of the users alone. Users need ongoing education on the risks, types of threats and best practices.”

Because employees are increasingly relying on mobile devices and applications for work purposes, he urges organisations to include these within the scope of security controls, testing initia-tives and anti-phishing technologies.

“By ensuring the use of a modern mobile endpoint and applica-tion management suite, organisations can enforce corporate poli-cies on authentication, data management and patching, providing flexibility for the end user while improving risk management for the business,” says Riley.

taking immediate actionIn the future, Capgemini cyber security director Lee Newcombe envisages organisations being able to connect “dirty devices” to corporate local area networks with lower risk, but he says this currently isn’t possible due to the legacy model of flat and rela-tively unprotected internal networks. “We are not yet living in the nirvana of a zero-trust world, with internal microsegmentation and every access request being subjected to a variety of security checks prior to being granted,” says Newcombe.

As a result, businesses need to take extra precautions when personal mobile devices are being used on corporate networks. First, he recommends that businesses ask their employees to ensure anti-malware signatures are up to date and delete any non-standard software before entering the office.

Newcombe also encourages businesses to conduct device pos-ture checks remotely and on connection to the local network if they have the capabilities. Another important step is to use secu-rity monitoring solutions for identifying malicious activities in the internal network. And firms shouldn’t neglect server-side anti-malware solutions by focusing their attention on other areas.

Although lots of businesses are reopening their offices with the easing of lockdown restrictions, the general consensus is

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that hybrid approaches will define the future of working. And as employees continue to use mobile devices at home and in the office, firms must strengthen their cyber defences accordingly.

Jitender Arora, chief information security officer at Deloitte UK, encourages businesses to adopt strong phishing defences, endpoint detection and response systems, essential security services, and web proxies in a bid to improve the security of their hybrid work-ing environments. For some people, returning to the office may be an exciting prospect after nearly two years of remote working – it’s

iron-clad proof that the troubles of the pandemic are beginning to fade away and that better things are around the corner.

But what many people don’t realise is that their mobile devices may be potentially unsafe and, when connected to office net-works, could possibly harm their employer’s IT infrastructure.

As a result, workers must ensure their devices are fully up to date and secure. And businesses must strengthen their network security so that insecure mobile devices don’t provide cyber criminals with a point of entry into corporate systems. n

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Heads-up, thumbs down

Jawed Karim, the cutest of YouTube’s three co-founders and star of its first ever video, has edited that video’s description to make clear his disgust at the site’s intention to remove the “thumbs-down” dislike button. Then he edited it again to expand on his feelings in more detail.

“When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is,” he scorned, before deciding he had more to get off his chest. People do need an outlet when they see some-thing they don’t like, and clicking a button seems a healthy way to discourage the PewDiePies of this world from multiplying. We actually like Karim’s method of self-expression more, though. Why can’t PewDiePie have just one video and turn its description section into a subtle mood ring? We haven’t needed to update ours since 2005: “Crushing so hard rn Jawed Karim 4eva!” n

“Why would YouTube make this

universally disliked change? There is a reason, but it’s

not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed. Instead, there will

be references to various studies ...

that contradict the common sense of every YouTuber”

Jawed Karim, YouTube co-founder

❯Read more on the Downtime blog.

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