Mobile workforce using public Wi-Fi and unsecured home networks is a serious security hazard, warns cybersecurity expert.

The pandemic forced millions of workers to leave their offices and work remotely, creating new cybersecurity challenges for companies globally.

Cybercriminals took notice, causing companies to experience record-setting losses brought about by data breaches.

However, remote work is not a passing phenomenon - according to Gartner, 51% of knowledge workers will work remotely by 2022, which is a 24% increase when compared to 2019.

If remote work meant working from home at the beginning of the pandemic, it is now changing towards working from anywhere. Cybersecurity-wise, this means that an increasing number of workers will access their work networks through vulnerable networks, and additional security measures have to be put in place to mitigate the connected risks.

WFA: the dangers of public Wi-Fi and unsecured remote locations

The switch to home offices left managers dealing with several cybersecurity threats stemming from unsecured home devices and networks, as well as unprotected internet traffic.

When the majority of employees work from a single location, there is only a need to protect the main network - which is less demanding than protecting as many endpoints as there are employees.

The problem becomes even more evident once employees are not working from a fixed location like home but are, for example, traveling while working and have no choice but to use public internet access.

"Adapting to working from home was a challenge to cybersecurity personnel everywhere, but the growing trend of working from anywhere entails a new set of threats to consider," said Algirdas Sakys, Information Security Manager at NordLayer. "Working from anywhere usually means using unencrypted public Wi-Fi, which can lead to information being intercepted, malware being distributed. There is an array of ways in which hackers exploit unsecured public networks, and businesses have to adapt their cybersecurity strategies accordingly."

The Castle-and-moat approach to cybersecurity is no longer viable

Since every remote employee is a potential threat to the integrity of a given company's data, businesses are shifting their cybersecurity strategies away from the castle-and-moat approach. Now, network security solutions based on the Zero Trust principle are replacing traditional, static defense strategies.

In the Zero Trust framework, the given network is protected by granting users and devices access to only those parts of the network that are essential to their task. In such a system, every user is authenticated before being allowed to access the needed data through an encrypted tunnel. Because of this, even if a device gets compromised, it can't cause network-wide damage.

Organizations that have Zero Trust-based system in place enhance their cybersecurity in three key areas: secure access, secure browsing, and increased cybersecurity training opportunities, added the NordLayer expert:

"First, a comprehensive security framework of this kind allows the remote employees to safely connect to the company network without putting the whole network at risk. Second, web browsing becomes considerably safer, allowing cybersecurity personnel to ensure employee browsing habits are not potentially harmful to the company. Finally, due to the automated nature of Zero Trust-based systems, managers gain more time to educate their personnel on best cybersecurity practices, which is crucial because defrauding humans is one of the chief enablers of successful cyberattacks."

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Cyber Security on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/cyber-security
• Read more about the impact of COVID-19 on FSN @ www.fieldservicenews.com/covid-19
• Find out more more about NordLayer @ nordlayer.com/
• Learn more about NordLayer @ twitter.com/NordLayer

Burns & McDonnell and Librestream partner to implement collaboration platform supporting critical infrastructure workforces.

To support clients in the critical infrastructure industries, Burns & McDonnell, a 100% employee-owned engineering, construction and architecture firm, and Librestream, the #1-rated provider of augmented reality (AR) and remote collaboration solutions, are collaborating to implement Librestream’s field-to-office collaboration and knowledge capture platform, Onsight. Onsight’s solution is device-agnostic and is compatible with computers, tablets and enterprise wearable devices, and helps field workers conduct their jobs safely and more efficiently.

THE TECHNOLOGY HELPS FIELD WORKERS ACCESS INFORMATION AND RESOLVE ISSUES MORE EFFICIENTLY

Through the value-added partnership, Burns & McDonnell will support training, technology management and system integrations of Librestream’s full-package solution to help clients navigate unprecedented challenges.

“We are excited to partner with Librestream and its technical excellence to enable our clients to access critical information and more rapidly resolve issues in the field,” says Matt Olson, vice president and managing director of the Networks, Integration & Automation Group at Burns & McDonnell. “The integrated experience that captures and shares knowledge across project teams offers advantages in design accuracy, safety and efficiency while creating multiple benefits — both individually and collectively — through each project phase.”

Evergy Ventures, a nonregulated subsidiary of investor-owned utility, Evergy, made a strategic investment in Librestream to accelerate digital transformation within the energy sector. Through its research, Evergy Ventures identified Librestream as the top provider of remote expert and knowledge management tools. Evergy Ventures is supporting Librestream with strategic guidance and helping develop key relationships with utility innovators.

“This is an incredibly transformative time in the energy industry, and it is great to see Burns & McDonnell, one of our trusted partners in our hometown of Kansas City, partnering with Librestream to continue to advance the digital workforce,” says Dennis Odell, vice president of Evergy Ventures.

Librestream's Onsight platform enables workforce transformation through industrial use cases, powering the workforce of the future by combining AR, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) data visualization, as well as enabling automated on-the-job training, reducing cognitive load and driving operational insights. Onsight enables customers to achieve meaningful business outcomes such as 70% productivity gains, 65%-70% increases in asset uptime, and increases of three times the inspections per day, all with a more integrated experience that captures and shares knowledge across the workforce.

“Burns & McDonnell brings strong industry experience with digital technology, use case development, platform integrations, stakeholder management and training,” says Gary McAuliffe, vice president of sales for global utilities, Librestream. “Together, we look forward to bringing all of the services and technology together to provide Burns & McDonnell clients with tools that are simple to incorporate on projects and increase efficiency and safety.”

Through the official partnership, the Onsight platform benefits to Burns & McDonnell clients will include:

• Field collaboration and conferencing built for rugged environments. When traveling to perform a site visit isn’t possible, videoconferencing supports projects through on-site troubleshooting calls from the field to team members working remotely or in the office. Calling from the field also allows the team to capture situational information for future training and work processes.
  
  
• Data gathering and knowledge capture. The technology minimizes time spent sorting through data. It has demonstrated faster field documentation than traditional methods, with Librestream noting a potential 70% productivity gain.
  
  
• Workflow — step-by-step guidance and ability to assign tasks to people in the field. With remote specialists a call away and guided systems in place, less-experienced personnel can perform necessary field tasks if needed. With workflows and guided forms, the software captures and organizes field knowledge automatically.

To publicly launch the newly formed partnership, Burns & McDonnell and Librestream will conduct a joint webinar on Sept. 28, 2021, at 11 a.m. EDT. Zachary Wassenberg, product manager with Burns & McDonnell, and McAuliffe will give an overview of the platform and discuss a specific use case associated with bulk electric system reliability (NERC FAC-008 inspections). Sign up for the webinar here.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/artificial-intelligence
• Read more about Augmented Reality on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/augmented-reality
• Find out more more about Librestream @ www.librestream.com
• Learn more about Burns & McDonnell @ www.burnsmcd.com
• Read more about Librestream on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/librestream

A gradual return to the office has had little to no impact on business investment in virtual collaboration technology according to new data from Tradeshift, which found telecoms spending is almost twice as high as it was prior to the pandemic.

According to Tradeshift’s latest Index of Global Trade Health, which analyzes transaction data between buyers and suppliers, the number of telecoms-related transactions crossing the company’s platform was up by 90% in Q2 compared to pre-pandemic levels. 

The significant uptick in telecoms spending is in stark contrast to the dramatic decrease in travel and hospitality spending since the pandemic. Business travel was 30% below pre-pandemic levels but the volume of transactions processed by Tradeshift has been increasing consistently since the first lockdown eased.

TRADESHIFT FINDS TELECOMS SPENDING GREW FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER IN A ROW, INDICATING NO IMMEDIATE END TO REMOTE WORKING REVOLUTION

Corporate hospitality spending dropped 81% in Q2 2020. A year on and it’s tracking at the same level suggesting client entertaining and networking events will remain virtual, at least for the time being.

Christian Lanng, CEO, Tradeshift, said: “For a lot of businesses remote working began as a defensive act, a way to keep the lights on during a very challenging period. But the upside of collaborating virtually quickly became apparent.

“As economies open up, I think we all have a renewed appreciation of what it means to come together in person. But we’ve come too far to go back to ways of working which suddenly feel like they belong to a different era. Getting together is still going to be part of working life, but those opportunities will come at a premium. Zoom is going to do the same thing to professional services as the container did to physical trade.”

“For our own part, we decided pretty early on that this change is not temporary, and whatever we come back to will not look like what we were used to before. Like many companies we decided that the future of work was not a binary choice between a fully remote workforce and one that is fully office-based.

“A lot of our teams are spread internationally, so remote working makes a lot more sense than going into an office to sit on Zoom calls. For other teams, particularly sales, it’s useful to be able to sit together and bounce ideas around. Flexibility has been absolutely central to our thinking.”

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Service Innovation and Design @ www.fieldservicenews.com/service-innovation-and-design
• Read more about Telecommunications on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/telecom
• Read more about Remote Work on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/remote-work
• Find out more more about Tradeshift @ tradeshift.com
• Follow Tradeshift on Twitter @ twitter.com/Tradeshift

Who else needs a vacation? We know it’s been a tough year for service leaders and your teams, so Aquant is hosting Service Leaders Spring Break where we are mixing work and play. The fun runs from March 22 - March 25.

What is Service Leaders Spring Break? It’s a virtual field service event for service pros, by services pros. Join sessions that will help spark ideas and polish best practices to ● Create and scale a well-rounded and inclusive workforce ● Provide service teams the best tools for success, regardless of current skill level ● Focus on the best KPIs to improve service outcomes, not just the ones that look good in monthly reports ● Make measurable improvements that slash the skills gap and improve service quality ● Navigate Covid-19 challenges with an eye towards future growth Events include:

Monday, March 22 Slashing the Service Skills Gap: An Alchemy of Tech, People & Processes Featuring

● Mike Rembelski, Vice President, Global Service at Danaher Corporation / Beckman Coulter Diagnostics

● Rodger Smelcer, Vice President and Owner, United Services Technologies, Inc.

● John Carroll, CEO, Service Council

Preventing Service Disasters: How Information Gaps Hurt Your Business

● Edwin Pahk, VP of Product Marketing & Business Development, Aquant

Tuesday, March 23 3 Milestones for Any New AI Deployment

Featuring

● Guy Ben-Ezer, Director Customer Success, Aquant

● Eric Federman, Customer Success Manager, Aquant

● Edwin Pahk, VP of Product Marketing & Business Development, Aquant

Wednesday, March 24 Creating Meaningful Diversity in Service

Featuring

● Roy Dockery, Vice President of Global Care at Swisslog Healthcare

● Robyn Walker, Senior Director, Customer Success and Service Operations at Mevion Medical Systems

● Carolyn Ridderman, Global Vice President, Customer Care at Stryker

Sign up now to get access to an exclusive beer tasting on March 25, featuring a beer brewed just for service leaders.

Learn more: Take a glance at scheduled sessions and sign up at servicespringbreak.com

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Aquant on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/aquant
• Read more about Service Leadership @ www.fieldservicenews.com/service-leadership
• Learn more about Service Leaders Spring Break @ servicespringbreak.com
• Learn more about Aquant @ www.aquant.io
• Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io

 

An unexpected but amusing cameo in a recent live stream with Nick Frank and Harald Wasserman not only brought a welcome moment of levity but also shone a spotlight on an important, but often overlooked aspect of remote working. Kris Oldland, reflects back on the session... 

I'm sure everyone of us at the moment is under a greater level of strain than we have ever felt before.

For me personally, I can confess to having never been under so much pressure. As an independent publisher, we have a tendency to punch well above our weight as it is, with an output that matches and dare I say it, betters that of any of the mainstream publishers I have worked for during my entire career in publishing. This is something I take immense pride in. 

Similarly, as the field service sectors leading global voice, I felt it was simply our duty to react in a proactive and positive manner to the current Covid19 pandemic and so establishing the support channel that we have created to host a series of live sessions to help offer guidance to field service companies during this time was something that I knew in my heart we had to move mountains to do. 

It is at times of crisis that we need both leaders and we need to come together as a community. It is our job as the primary layer of news media in the global field service sector to facilitate that. And we may be winging it a little, as are we all at the moment, but so far, I think we've done a reasonable job of achieving quite a lot in very little time - thanks in the main to the wonderful support from our friends in the industry.

But I'll freely admit, it has been tough, I'm tired and I know there is a long way to go yet. We'll get there, but there is a long, long way to go.

 

An Excellent Moment of Learning from an Unexpected Source: 

So a week or so on from the first Emergency Symposium we hosted on Covid-19 and its impact on field service organisations and I have just a moment to take stock on everything that happened in a whirlwind of anxiety, anticipation, and action.

While there have been countless excellent learnings from our Covid19 sessions, which you can catch up on here, perhaps one of the most important aspects of the current situation was raised by an unexpected cameo on my recent stream with Nick Frank and Harald Wasserman of Si2 Partners. 

 

"It was the follow up cameo that brought a wonderful moment of levity into what have quite understandably been a series of tense sessions across the week..."

 

It was a moment of sheer unexpected levity, and it shone a light on a very important, yet potentially easily overlooked, aspect of the remote working environment we are all currently engaged in. 

Just as Nick was speaking about the importance of strong leadership we saw a blurred flash across the camera as his young daughter entered into the shot. However, it was the follow up cameo that brought a wonderful moment of levity into what have quite understandably been a series of tense sessions across the week. With the wonderful exuberance of youth on her side, Nick's daughter proceeded to torment her Dad, with a pair of bunny ears behind his head and a wry smile to our live audience before treating us to one more wave as her brief, but enjoyable cameo came to an end. 

It was an endearing moment, one that reminded us all of the humanity that lies behind the screen - something that was acknowledged by a number of the audience in the chat room of the live session. 

 

"Actually, you are letting people in to your lives and I think this is quite difficult for some people..."

 

Nick coped with things admirably, and there were shades of Professor Robert Kelly's famous BBC video interview, which went viral, for sure. However, what this intervention brought forward was an important discussion on the importance of levity in these challenging times. 

"The thing about remote working and 'virtual sessions' is that they are very intense," Frank commented during the stream. 

"The meetings are much shorter, they are to the point and rather than having one or two sessions which are much longer these are shorter, more frequent and more intense. The other thing is that you can see the environment. Actually, you are letting people in to your lives and I think this is quite difficult for some people. 

"But now, because of the situation we are in, people are getting used to the seeing the working environment and it actually becomes OK, we're all in the same boat and it is of no surprise. What it brings is an informality to the discussion which completely changes the means of communication.

"I think it is these moments of levity and socialisation that can allow us to understand our teams as people and who they are and that is an important part of leadership, and good leadership is vital at the moment." 

Well said Nick and thanks Katy for bringing a smile to many of our faces at an intense time. It was a lesson many of us needed - i.e. to remember that while we may be working a million miles an hour to get through this crisis, while the rolling news continues to update us on everything that is in front of us, ultimately we must remember that a moment of levity, a reminder of the human behind the screen, can be a wonderful tonic to keep us going. 

 

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Finally, to say a big thank you for everyone who has joined our new Patreon tiers of paid for support of our work. 

We will be arranging for all of our premium content library to be uploaded to a non-sponsored, members only access area in the coming week and will also be setting up the discussion groups and arranging for some additional member only interviews to be conducted so watch this space.  

If you are interested in accessing our additional membership tiers you can do so from as little as £15/month and throughout the duration of the pandemic that costs will give you access to the top tier VIP membership as well. Find out more @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/subscription-tiers

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Company says its photo and video-based app can help reduce contact between technicians and customers.

XOi Technologies have made access to their Vision app free to new customers until September 1 in an effort to support the service sector during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lockdowns

With lockdowns being implemented globally alongside initiatives such as social distancing the number of physical service calls are being reduced. It means the use of remote technology in the sector is becoming more prominent.

XOi’s cloud-based application uses Vision uses photo and video documentation with real-time remote video support which the firms says can cut down customer and engineer interactions.

“Going completely remote simply isn’t an option for the field service industry, where site visits are just part of the job,” XOi’s CEO Aaron Salow said. “But with technology like ours, it’s possible to reduce the face-to-face interactions that technicians experience on calls. By offering wider access to XOi, we feel like we’re doing our part to keep the industry we serve engaged, connected, and productive during a difficult period.”

As the virus takes a firmer hold on infrastructure Salow hoped the decision to offer their technology free of charge would affirm the wellbeing of the company’s community. “Our top priority is the health and safety of our own employees, workers in the contracting industry, and our customers and partners,” he said. “These are difficult circumstances for the communities we serve. We see an opportunity to reach out to them and offer something that can help their team members and customers stay safe while also supporting their businesses during a period of financial strain.”

 

For details on the offer, visit http://www.xoi.io/xoi-offer/ contact Nick Hughes at nhughes@xoi.io for further information.

Approximately one in three companies (32 per cent) believe the business use of artificial intelligence will be commonplace within the next decade, new research from TomTom Telematics has revealed.

The study found that 22 per cent believe virtual reality will be in common usage, while around one in five anticipates the prevalence of in-vehicle working due to the development of autonomous vehicles.

However, almost a third (32 per cent) fear they may struggle to keep pace with the rate of technological change. Furthermore, one in two (49 per cent) believe those that fail to embrace digitalised processes and the Internet of Things are at greater risk of going out of business.

“Complacency can sound the death knell for businesses,” said Beverley Wise, director UK & Ireland at TomTom Telematics.

“Companies should be mindful of the pace of change and keep a close eye on the solutions and processes that will help ensure a competitive future – from smart mobility and connected tech to advanced manufacturing and design systems. Many of today’s new emerging technologies will disrupt and revolutionise commerce, and in the process become the standard for tomorrow.”

Almost half of companies (46 per cent) believe remote working has or will become, the norm within the next 10 years. Remote working is currently proving more prevalent among larger companies (58 per cent) than their SMEs counterparts (37 per cent).

“The onus is on businesses, both large and small, to adapt to this new era of hypermobility and connected working that is being ushered in by advancements in areas ranging from telematics and the connected car to iPaaS and blockchain solutions,” added Wise.

“Such connected technologies and unified communication systems are unshackling workers from traditional working patterns - an empowering development that is set to significantly impact productivity and business efficiency.”

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