How SSLTrust Helps You Establish a Hybrid Workplace Model

It's difficult to overstate the sheer disruption of the world that was brought about by COVID-19. It feels like the pandemic led to changes both big and small in virtually every aspect of daily life, and it's particularly noteworthy how it sped up the presence and importance of the hybrid work environment.

Namely, the notion of a hybrid workplace where a worker's presence in the physical office is, for the most part, optional, is hardly new. Some experimental workplace models have introduced the idea of hybrid working even ahead of time, but the idea was hardly commonplace ahead of COVID-19. Now, however, some employees end up changing companies if their current company culture does not allow for remote team members in any way, shape, or form.

You, too, may find yourself in this position.

If you're an employer whose service, niche, or job category supports remote work, it's time to ask if there's any real reason why you wouldn't allow your employees to avoid in-person presence. The global workplace strategy is shifting, and if you find yourself unable to comply with hybrid working, you may find your employee engagement dropping off.

This, however, is a wholly different can of worms. This article presupposes that you have nothing against remote working and that you are, in fact, looking for a way to implement the hybrid work model into your core workplace strategy. Whether you've got an all-remote company or if you're simply looking to reduce the need for office workers, security ought to be your number one consideration. Let us explain!

Hybrid working is, quite simply, the ability to support remote work alongside in-person employment. Whether that means that you allow your employees to choose whether they work remotely, or if it means that you rotate them in and out of office space depending on the task at hand, it matters very little. As soon as you establish an interrelationship between your remote workers and your in-person employees, and officially allow them to maximize their job satisfaction by choosing one over the other, you've established your own flavor of the hybrid work model.

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before hybrid work would become commonplace. The pandemic itself simply pushed it up a few years, forcing businesses to scramble and adapt to the situation as it evolved.

Generally speaking, there will always be more potential avenues of attack when dealing with remote employees. While remote employees can be significantly more productive and efficient than they might be in case of in-person employment, it's also easier to keep a tab on everyone when they're in office full-time.

My default, the hybrid model is more susceptible to data leaks and security problems. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize the innate issues of a hybrid work model. Best of all - they don't even affect your employees' job satisfaction, if executed correctly.

After all, choosing between the possibility of your entire workforce suddenly becoming afflicted with a serious virus and allowing them to work remotely is really no choice at all. As long as it's still possible to hit the desired business outcomes, there should be virtually no problem with working remotely. The boons, in particular, are often quite substantial:

Thankfully, modern tech did allow for a proliferation of remote workers after a short period of adaptation. Having seen the transition in practice, however, it became obvious that the maintenance of a positive and healthy work environment isn't the only concern. Malicious elements suddenly got a far greater array of potential attack vectors thanks to the hybridization of company culture, and Internet security became even more important than it already was.

So, what could be done?

It goes without saying that securing a hybrid workplace is an extremely tall order. For all the improvements in productivity and work-life balance that a hybrid work environment can bring, it also presents your IT specialists with a substantial list of security risks that could otherwise be avoided simply by having everyone present within the office space.

It's clear, then, that a hybrid organization will need to carefully assess how its employees complete the tasks at a remote location. As remote participants, they require many of the same boons that in-office operations come with as a default. These will, too, need to be weighed against the potential security risks they might pose.

The consideration of potential security risks that come with remote work needs to be done early on:

Inevitably, working remotely leads to greater risk of exposure to these issues. It's only sensible, then, to get ahead of these issues before any of them crop up, and secure your hybrid work model as comprehensively as possible.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that three of the four aforementioned security concerns are, in fact, related to information transmission. This, as it happens, is where SSLTrust comes in.

SSLTrust is more than just a certificate provider. In the context of a hybrid work environment, SSLTrust can be your one-stop-shop for comprehensive service coverage. Provided, of course, that you opt for the right kind of SSL/TLS certificate in the first place.

There are several security features that a hybrid work system relies on to keep everyone involved safe and sound. Business owners need to look for solutions that deliver strong encryption, integrity validation, and user authentication. In doing so, the risks of pivoting towards a hybrid workplace are effectively minimized.

This is, naturally, a very generalized look at how hybridized security is put into action. Specific hybrid schedule implementations are put in place in specific ways at different companies, and the best way to go about choosing the right digital certification solution is to consult industry experts. Here at SSLTrust, you can speak directly with our team of Australian-based web security experts to help you figure out the best possible SSL product for you.

SSLTrust has every pertinent type of SSL certificate on the market, after all. This allows us to fine-tune our approach for your specific use case, should you wish us to do so. Large companies may, for example, need to invest in high-brow Extended Validation certificates, while a smaller, more manageable setup may allow your IT specialists to make do with something significantly more affordable.

When it comes to hybrid work, it is absolutely crucial that your company culture adapts to accommodate both of the applicable choices involving employees. Whether that means you put remote-first principles as a tentpole of your company's core values or not matters very little: security goals absolutely need to be reached.

The problem, here, is that coming up with a hardline information membrane of sorts is no mean feat. Consulting industry experts for advice is the best possible first step for the realization of a hybrid work model, simply because it's all too easy to drop the ball and make your company a prime target for a man-in-the-middle attack or worse.

On top of investing in a solid SSL/TLS solution, it is positively crucial that you keep your employees informed and prepared for potential social engineering attempts. Malicious elements that know a certain company engages in hybrid work may try to trick its employees into giving away key information. Said employees might not even be aware that they're giving away security weaknesses in the first place.

Hybrid work security is, therefore, a front with two prongs: one is your software security solution, and the other are your employees themselves. Neither will do its job right without the other!

Now, keeping all of the above in mind, it's worth remembering that there are very few established and entrenched hybrid work models in place right now. It's still early days for the concept of entertaining full-time remote colleagues in a regular context, after all, and balancing the employee experience across the board isn't something that comes easy - even for industry veterans.

Make no mistake, this task is hard enough as it is even if you didn't have to think about your business' security prospects. So, why not offload those concerns onto experts?

If you know what you're about, simply choose the right SSL certificate for your business and enjoy stellar pricing models across the board. SSLTrust offers impeccable certificate documentation, too, as well as assistance opportunities no matter the product.

Be sure to consult the SSLTrust website security repository, too. Combine this invaluable resource with a short talk to our team of certification experts, and your newly hybridized workplace can be up-and-running in record time.

By relegating most of your security concerns over to a certificate provider, you're making sure that you can focus on what matters the most: leading your employees through a change in company culture.

As a hybrid business owner, it's your job to ensure that the employee experience is on par for all of your workers. Your talent pool is what keeps your business running, after all, and by choosing SSLTrust as your web security provider of choice, you're choosing the path of least resistance for your enterprise to prosper in the coming years.