EXPERT OPINION
Outside the four walls of the data centre
Michael Cade , Senior Global Technologist , Veeam , shares with us how the four walls of the data centre have collapsed and increased the attack vector as organisations in MENA embrace and promote remote working . lmost three-quarters of professionals across the
A Middle East and North Africa ( MENA ) region prefer jobs that allow them to work remotely , according to a new survey by job site , Bayt . com . The impact of the pandemic is likely to see this trend continue as 90 % of respondents said they expect that remote work will increase over the next decade . Now that organisations and employees have seen some of the benefits of remote working , many companies are likely to build more flexible and agile working arrangements into their long-term strategies . For IT departments , the impact of this is huge .
The digital fortress
Formerly , a company ’ s IT infrastructure was contained within its own four walls . Employees used hardware such as PCs , printers and phones which remained securely in the office , while software programs and data were stored in onpremises data centres . IT had full control over the performance , maintenance and security of the organisation ’ s technology stack . Early remote working initiatives were tightly controlled with users connecting to virtual private networks ( VPN ) so that the only thing that left the data centre was the employee and the limited hardware . Over the VPN , the IT department could maintain visibility of security protocols and maintain administrators ’ rights to ensure employees were not installing unapproved , potentially high-risk software .
Along came the cloud , which allowed organisations to scale-up their data storage capacity as well as their ability to back up files to remote locations .
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