How IT Can Proactively Manage the Return to the Office

The shift to a remote workforce after COVID-19 restrictions were put into place around the world accelerated the adoption of cloud-based services for many organizations – while it also had employees scrambling to grab work computers and other devices from the office before the facilities closed down.

Fortunately, planning how to transition back to an office environment can unfold under more leisurely circumstances and thus gives IT pros a real chance to figure out how to get their end users back on to all the company systems safely, securely and with a minimal need for support.

The reality at this moment is that we do not know when our daily work routines will fully return to normal. Taking the time now to prepare for a return to the office and implement procedures to return hardware to corporate networks will help in avoiding delays in productivity and collaboration across the workforce.

After six or more months of corporate laptops being connected to at-home wired and wireless networks, IT will have justifiable security concerns about the integrity of those devices and how they can be safely allowed back on the network.

As we researched this article, some common themes surfaced:

IT should start their planning with the step the end user is likely to make first: reconnecting company devices and other IT assets to the corporate network upon return to the office.

Heather Paunet, senior vice president of product and marketing at network security firm Untangle, shared a few key tips about how organizations can approach the challenge of re-incorporating this hardware into physical offices:

Another area she shared as being critical with the return to the office – and the return of devices to the office – is employee access levels. It might be time to consider a zero-trust approach.

“In times when employees are coming back to the corporate network with perhaps more personal applications and data on their devices, an assessment is particularly important,” Paunet said.

She continued, “It is much safer to take an approach of denying access to everything, unless it is specifically needed, than to do it the other way around and remove access later.”

Eric Carrell, a DevOps engineer at RapidAPI, suggested a new emphasis on preparing employees for the increased cybercrimes and ransomware attacks that have spiked during the pandemic.

The final recommendation around the return to the office came from Liz Beavers, who is the Head Geek at IT infrastructure management software provider SolarWinds. Beavers confirms that asset management is a critical step in any return to physical offices and the associated planning.

“As a result of working from home, many company’s employees have spread out geographically, meaning company-owned assets and IT are scattered across locations as well,” she said.

“With offices reopening and employees returning, tracking is imperative to ensure all assets are accounted for when transitioning back to the office. This is important to confirm expensive IT devices aren’t lost or misplaced, track any changes employees may have made to their systems or devices, and it helps IT uncover where they may need to purchase new equipment. By keeping inventory accurate, IT teams will have a clear path of what needs to be updated as they return to in-person operations.”