The world has changed forever in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As working from home becomes a normal part of many workers lives, changing culture means that many businesses will need to review how they manage their technology systems. When convenience is expected and staying connected is essential, a lagging network or system meltdown can have catastrophic effects on a business. Whether you are aware of it or not, there are rapid changes occurring in technology and you must innovate your business in order to stay competitive. 

Online collaboration, remote onboarding and cyber security will be hot topics in 2021 based on what we’ve seen post-pandemic. Let’s look at these new trends in IT and dive into how they may affect your business. 

A Rise In Online Collaboration

One of the largest trends in IT is the rise in online collaboration between work teams, clients and B2B enterprises and it’s only going to increase. Online collaboration is the process of users from anywhere in the world connecting virtually and working on tasks simultaneously, all facilitated by software applications.

Many of us are familiar with Zoom, which grew from a startup in 2011 to a public offering in 2019 and became a household name during the pandemic as the go-to choice for video conferences. Other corporate tools like Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts joined the party soon after and gave users a suite of powerful tools to communicate via video, audio and text. 

Basic communication isn’t the only thing being turned on its head. With the insatiable demand for content-driven communication, new ventures such as Figma, Slab and Tandem continue to emerge and fill niches for content creation and sharing, project tracking and employee training. These tools help create a virtual office that replicates working together and makes communication and collaboration easy. 

There’s no understating the importance of online collaboration for modern teams to succeed and expectations in this area will only grow.

Increased Remote Onboarding

Another new trend in IT that has caught our attention is the rise of remote onboarding. This goes hand in hand with the acceptance of working from home (or anywhere) and could be applicable to new clients, staff or contractors. Although this brings many advantages, it also creates challenges with sharing data efficiently and securely.

If you use a private network to store or transfer important data related to your business, you will want to ensure that it remains secure for the entirety of its journey between each device. Cloud infrastructure and networking is a solution that gives users access to networking resources — data, information and hardware devices – through a group of interconnected servers. For example: if you bring a new team member on board, you can provide a laptop that has network access and logins pre-installed. This speeds up onboarding, removes unnecessary stress and makes the process less complicated.

Remote onboarding with this solution becomes significantly more simplified as data exchanges will be fast, secure and reliable. If your business is considering hiring remote contractors or simply wishing to improve current staff and client integrations, look into cloud infrastructure and networking.

Tighter Cyber Security Measures

Gone are the days when it was only governments and corporations who needed to protect against hacker attacks. Hacking has become increasingly sophisticated and small to medium enterprises make easy targets for system shutdowns, data ransom and intellectual property theft. Cyber security is the practice of protecting systems, networks and programs from digital attacks. 

It is particularly challenging to implement effective cybersecurity measures due to the sheer number of devices available and the innovative attack strategies of the attackers. Common threats include phishing, ransomware, malware and social engineering. 

Vulnerabilities in a business environment typically come from people, processes and technology. In order for cyber security to be successful, improvements in all of these areas are essential. This includes training staff to gain an understanding of basic data security principles like choosing strong passwords, being wary of email attachments and backing up data. Another step is creating a framework for dealing with attempted and successful cyber attacks that will guide you to respond to threats and recover more quickly. Finally, protecting hardware and software devices like computers, routers, networks and the cloud with firewalls, DNS filterings, malware protection, antivirus software and email security ensures all main entities are protected. 

Deployus Helps You Prepare For Now And The Future

Business is always moving fast and keeping up to date with new technologies and trends is essential to staying ahead of the curve. If you’re unsure how to facilitate these trends in IT, speak to Deployus. 

We’re an expert managed services provider with over 20 years of experience in the industry. Far from getting stuck in the past, we’re constantly looking for new technology that will enable our clients to service their customers better and scale according to growth. Deployus take the hassle out of technology integration and back it up with support when you need it most. Contact us today to find out how we can help.