IT is a highly pervasive field that, in the past decade, has become inseparable from the modern business. We have seen this first-hand since the onset of COVID-19. Businesses had to shield their employees from the virus, and the most viable solution was remote working, which in turn led to the widespread implementation of new technologies and solutions.
We spoke with TechQuarters, a company that provides IT support services in London –as a tech company themselves, they are highly conscious of the trends and challenges that emerge in the IT sector and have told us what they consider to be the top 3 IT challenges that businesses may face in 2022.
Maintaining Hybrid Environments
With remote working here to stay, and businesses wanting to return to the office at the same time, the model of Hybrid working proved to be a desirable and efficient compromise. However, with this being such a new concept and the fact that many businesses had spent years and quite a lot of money investing in office-based solutions and on-premise tech infrastructure, many CIOs have been faced with the challenge of trying to establish what a hybrid work environment should look like.
One example of this is with companies looking to set up appropriate audio-visual tools to enable office workers and remote workers to communicate and collaborate properly. The trouble is that is a slate of factors to consider – are these tools cost-effective for the company? Will they be compatible with every user’s work device? Will the benefits of high-end tools be lost on users with low network reliability?
Then there are other Hybrid infrastructure issues, such as whether remote workers are as well-equipped as office workers? As providers of Managed IT Support London businesses rely on for their IT, TechQuarters have spent the last 18 months advising customers on what technology they should be providing remote workers, and they have found that many customers cited an increase in productivity when they were equipped with new technology to support remote work – therefore, this should also be a key aspect of any hybrid work infrastructure.
Cyber Crime
It is expected that the number of cyberattacks committed against businesses will grow in the next year; as well as this, the sophistication of attacks is constantly increasing. There is a constant arms race between cybercriminals and cyber security providers when it comes to developing tools and solutions. To combat this ever-growing challenge, it is critical that businesses are continually assessing and improving their cybersecurity capabilities, in order to remain protected against the most sophisticated of attacks – it is unfortunate but true that any business, small or large, can fall victim to a highly advanced cyber-attack.
There are a number of ways in which businesses should address this challenge. To start with, network and infrastructure monitoring are critical. A cyber attack could hit at any time, so it is critical for businesses to always be on the lookout. There are many different solutions available for these, the latest of which even incorporate machine learning and Cloud integration in order to firstly constantly update their threat detection capabilities, and also to be able to monitor suspicious activity across an organization’s entire infrastructure. The practice of proactive monitoring can save IT, teams, time and work when they detect suspicious activity before it causes any lasting damage.
Failsafe such as Backup and Disaster Recovery services will also be critical for businesses’ security infrastructures in 2022. It is expected that Ransomware will continue to be the most pressing security issue over the next year – therefore implementing backup services will control the damage ransomware attacks are capable to wreak on a company.
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IT Burnout
A major IT challenge businesses will likely face this year comes from the potential for IT teams to experience burnout. Unfortunately, the workloads and demands placed on IT teams have steadily grown; whilst budgets have not been matching this growth. Historically in business, business decision-making and IT decision-making have been mostly segregated. As IT became more commonplace in businesses, it was not necessarily seen to be as important as it has proven to be.
Of course, nowadays, it is almost unimaginable for a business to operate without the integration of information and communication technology; but in many cases, businesses are still not considering IT as carefully as they should be in terms of budgeting and strategy. The resulting strain this can place on IT departments is invariably at the detriment of the whole organization.
The solution to this is systemic change in the way businesses strategize. With IT support is as important as it is, it should be a priority in businesses decision-making. This will ensure that IT departments do not feel as though they are being stretched too thinly.