{"id":2399,"date":"2020-04-16T14:52:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T10:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/?p=2399"},"modified":"2025-04-17T23:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T19:59:20","slug":"covid-19-pandemic-causes-massive-shift-work-styles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/covid-19-pandemic-causes-massive-shift-work-styles\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 pandemic causes massive shift in work styles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Gunter Reiss, Vice President of\nWorldwide Marketing at A10 Networks<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the shelter-in-place\norders spread across the country and around the world, it has placed a huge\nburden on businesses of all sizes and the service providers that serve them and\nmillions of their customers around the globe. While a massive shift to working\nfrom home is an obvious consequence of these orders, it has likely taken most\nby surprise as bandwidth requirements skyrocketed within a few short weeks. At\nthe very same time, we are grappling with the reality of schools being closed,\nin-person events being cancelled and social distancing becoming the new black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been a shock to\nsay the least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\nDo Businesses Cope?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The global crisis is\naffecting organizations in many different ways. We\u2019re not dealing with the more\nanticipated worldwide spikes in internet use caused by the World Cup or the\nOlympics for which service providers can plan. In fact, streaming services are being asked\nto throttle<\/a> their\nservices back so the internet doesn\u2019t \u201cbreak\u201d now that consumers are not only\nhome working but home gaming and watching programs. And business services like\nvideo conferencing and SaaS applications are experiencing\nunprecedented use for work<\/a>, school work and connecting\nwith others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For businesses facing\nthese issues, it\u2019s critical that your application services can meet the new\nlevels of demand. Can you handle peak loads or does infrastructure need to be\nupgraded? Can cloud-bursting help alleviate the challenges caused by dramatic\nspikes in use? Can traffic or web workloads be split to quickly deploy new\nvirtual application delivery instances for failover and continuity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about staffing\nshortages when employees must shelter-in-place or worse, fall ill? In these\ntypes of scenarios, it\u2019s critical that your infrastructures employ automation\nand cross-infrastructure visibility via a Polynimbus secure application\nservices strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have already seen\ncustomers in the financial services, education and technology sectors having to\npivot rapidly to fortify their infrastructures as millions of workers go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protecting\nthe Network from Attacks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If early reports are\nany indication, cyber attackers<\/a> are finding renewed motivation and new\ntargets to launch distributed denial of service\n(DDoS) attacks<\/a>. These days, attackers may find themselves with extra time on their\nhands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business resources are more essential than ever to help keep us\nconnected. All sectors: technology (including all of those apps providing\ndelivery services), education and especially those critical sectors like\ngovernment, financial services and healthcare must be protected to ensure this\nconduit is uninterrupted when everything else is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embracing\u00a0artificial intelligence\/machine learning and automation<\/a>\u00a0can help find known and unknown attacks in real-time. Combining these capabilities with actionable\u00a0threat intelligence<\/a>\u00a0is especially important with the ongoing shortage in security expertise. This may become compounded by the disruption to personnel for COVID-19<\/a> preparedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will the Pandemic Speed the Adoption of 5G?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are mixed indicators as to whether the pandemic will speed the\nadoption or slow it down due to the global economic fall-out. However, one\nthing is for certain, shelter-in-place orders are having a dramatic impact on\nhow people are connecting with each other. What were once in-person exercise\nclasses, religious services and cocktail hours are moving to virtual. As Terry\nYoung, explains in her blog post about the adoption of 5G<\/a> in the time of a pandemic, service providers are, to no\nsurprise, experiencing a surge in network traffic. 5G has the potential to make\nthese virtual connections better with its promised ultra-reliable low-latency\ncapability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What must service providers consider during these times? Do you have sufficient IP addresses in your IPv4 or IPv6 pools<\/a> and sufficient capacity to handle the increased demand in\ntraffic and subscribers? Is your network protected against DDoS attacks? Can\nyou effectively steer more critical services or temporarily give them higher\npriority?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many service providers, such as Vodafone<\/a>, are augmenting capacity to meet the higher peak traffic\ndemand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preventing Cyber Foul Play<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, cyber criminals are using the global crisis to launch new attacks at new targets. Since the start of the pandemic in late 2019, we have seen different attacks, ranging from\u00a0attackers targeting the World Health Organization (WHO) to steal information<\/a>\u00a0to mass\u00a0phishing email and spam campaigns<\/a>\u00a0targeting remote workers. We have even seen cases where cybercriminals are\u00a0launching websites with domain names related to Coronavirus and<\/a> COVID-19<\/a>, exploiting people\u2019s curiosity or worry to eventually launch ransomware attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, more than ever, organizations must take a \u201ctrust nobody\u201d approach\nto security. As Babur Khan explains in his blog post about preventing cyber attacks<\/a>,\norganizations of all kinds must take a Zero\nTrust approach. Make sure that no user has access to data that they don\u2019t\ndepend on for their day-to-day functions. Restrict access as much as possible.\nEnsure that you have visibility into all your users, traffic, data and\nworkloads, and that you have uniform security policies applied across all\nlocations to make sure no security loopholes exist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are in the midst of a global event such as we have not seen in recent\nmemory. It is requiring all of us to retool, revamp and readjust again and\nagain. It is a time to re-evaluate your critical infrastructure and security\npractices to ensure they are fortified to the level required for the network\ntraffic and cyber attacks we are experiencing and will continue to experience\nin the months ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While a massive shift to working from home is an obvious consequence of these orders, it has likely taken most by surprise as bandwidth requirements skyrocketed within a few short weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9618],"tags":[596,671,373,723,724,686,1117,838],"contributor":[],"class_list":["post-2399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-pick","tag-5g_technology","tag-a10_networks","tag-business","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid_19","tag-cyber_attack","tag-networking_","tag-remote_working"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Gunther-Reiss-e1587034477828.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Rabab","author_link":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/author\/rabab\/"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=2399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}