Establishing connectivity first was the decision that many organisations took in their initial response to remote working. This has left a lot of companies exposed to cybercriminals.
Hybrid Working for Hedge Funds: is Cloud IT the new normal?
Investment firms such as hedge funds, asset managers, wealth management and private equity firms are facing new hybrid working arrangements. Is now the moment to consider specialist cloud-hosted IT for hybrid working, in addition to its established benefits in cybersecurity and regulatory compliance?
Making the Unthinkable Work
Unprecedented change has meant that investment firms have switched their attention to be effective whilst working remotely. With workplace restrictions easing, you are now looking at slowly letting employees back into the office. However, the new status quo means implementing and adapting to new workplace practises or risking a future without sustainable success. In most cases the return to an office will not be binary: most employees expect more flexibility, with hybrid working arrangements comprising a mix of home, remote and office working.
For those organisations with on-site systems, the switch to remote working created significant network and remote access challenges. If all your users are now coming back to the office, it might seem that you can simply back out those changes and return to normal. But is it that simple? Everything we see implies only a partial return to the office, meaning you will need to implement further changes to make a mixed population of home and office-based users work securely and effectively.
Returning to a New Office Experience
Research conducted by Morgan Stanley highlights workers in London are much more likely to continue to work remotely compared to other European capitals. 82% of people who responded wished to continue to work partially from home.
A survey conducted by LinkedIn has found that one in five (20%) said that they intend to continue working from home until they feel more comfortable in a work place environment. Just 24% said they wished to return to normal working in the office. 76% of workers wanted to change their working practice including limiting their time in the office to a few days a week and to minimise physical contact, emphasising the growing demand for flexible working arrangements.
Hedge funds will need to consider their staff’s new expectation or risk employee resistance and other implications further down the line. It is important for investment firms to implement IT processes that are versatile and that offer long-term solutions ensuring efficiency, flexibility and security.
Moving back – What You Need to Consider
Having employees working effectively from two locations raises several questions:
- How will you integrate the new collaboration and video conferencing apps back in the office?
- Are you going to add additional bandwidth to accommodate the new applications and file sharing so you do not experience a slower connection? At what cost?
- How secure are the new applications you adopted?
- Do you have the resources to handle both office-based and home-based employees?
- If you utilise a local server that has been adapted to allow effective remote working, how is your firewall going to work with a split workforce?
- How much will it cost to have your firewall modified again?
- What are your more permanent alternatives?
Is Now the Time to Consider Moving to the Cloud?
Cranberry Cloud is one of a range of cloud-based services from Tivarri. Being one of the longest-serving providers in this market, with extensive knowledge of cloud technology for regulated companies, we have been heavily involved in industry wide communication protocols used for secure remote access. We provide full office collaboration with all common industry applications supported including Bloomberg professional. This has allowed us to successfully migrated thousands of applications to our cloud-hosted Desktop platforms.
We have extensive knowledge of Microsoft licensing options, enabling us to provide you with a cost-effective solution. Tivarri also provides a disaster recovery service SystemFlip Continuous Recovery and small footprint low energy fan-less computers Cranberry Computer.
In our next article we will look at the operation issues with “Making Remote working Secure and Sustainable”.
Do you have questions about how returning to work is going to affect your IT systems?
Get in touch and speak to an expert.
ISO27001 – check the small print
ISO27001 (Information Security) recognition of the standard and security of services we offer
Security of our Client’s data is critical for any Cloud service and so we built our service based on best practice principles which are mandated in the ISO27001:2013 standard – the preferred standard for information security management.
Many companies claim ISO27001 compliance, but they will often only certify a specific service or application e.g. certify a single product when they have a portfolio of 50, but make it appear that it applies to their entire business.
Tivarri has been certified ISO27001 against the latest version of the specification (2013) for the entire business and all our operations. This gives customers confidence that all the services that we offer are fully ISO complaint. For those customers who need to undertake annual information security audits, this should make the IT component of the audit straightforward. Please don’t forget that we are always on-hand to assist with your audit questions or to speak to your auditors directly on your behalf.
It you have any IT related questions regarding regulation, Cloud services, security or best practice please do not hesitate to contact us.
Tivarri is GCLOUD-12 certified
Tivarri has been approved as a Crown Commercial Service Cloud Hosting service provider under the new GCloud-12 framework. This means the same hosted desktop service that our customers are using today, Cranberry Cloud, has been approved for UK Government use.
This benefits all our customers as the Crown Commercial Service now monitors our business performance – credit scores, financial stress scores, investigates specific queries raised about suppliers, and performs random spot checks on services to ensure we match their service requirements as required for government contracts. This gives an additional level of assurance over the services we offer and the long-term sustainability of the Tivarri business.
