 Digitalisation has accelerated significantly during the past year, transforming how we interact with others faster than we could have ever imagined. The cyberconnected world of work and play brings with it technology jargon like “5G network security”, “device configuration” and “mobile application development”, striking confusion into the hearts of many business executives, who don’t know where to begin. For success in business, digital transformation should start with humans, not technology. It is about the superior quality of their work relationships, enabling them to break through the silos so typical to the world of work. Innovating or adopting digital requires the engagement and accountability of many different stakeholders across the enterprise and beyond.  In the post-COVID age of 5G empowered innovation, such as virtual assistants and connected cars, business executives need to raise important questions such as:
At Cyberconnecting, we believe that responses to these questions require a holistic and human-centric approach. Tools from digital anthropology - such as in-depth UX research - and the application of an identity-based approach deliver the solution necessary to build not just content but meaningful and effective connections in today’s cyberconnected world of work and play. Schedule a free conversation with Priya E. Abraham to see what this could mean for your business.  Our professional interactions are becoming more digital by the day. The digital revolution has brought with it endless opportunities for business automation, brand reach and growth. But now, more than ever, digitalising business processes, content, and interactions requires special care with regard to online security. A strong cybercapacity foundation, which encompasses both elements of cybersecurity and privacy, can benefit every aspect of your business. While many entrepreneurs acknowledge the basic necessity for greater security, what is less discussed is the value that your cybercapacity can add to your brand. Previously, we have introduced the Cyberpower (CP) Brand Framework, going over the components that make it into a strategic roadmap.  Here, we dive further into the importance of safeguarding your digital assets when embarking on brand growth. Recapping the Cyberpower Brand FrameworkIf we conceptualise your brand as a house that is home to your business, the CP Brand Framework is the building plan, which seeks to ensure that the construction stands on a sturdy foundation. With branding, the widely available ‘quick-fix’ solutions often make sure that the house comes together and looks great. Without a doubt, appearance is important to attract people in the first place. But without paying attention to the foundation, how long and in what conditions the house persists is up to faith. The CP Brand Framework first sees the importance of identity awareness for nailing down your unique strategic positioning and embarking on the conscious development of authentic branding. Secondly, it factors in your cybercapacity, to make sure your brand is ready to withstand the cyberrisks we all face today. These two steps form the foundation of all your online interactions and constitute the starting line for further brand development. For a full overview of the Framework, check out our previous article here. Your Interactions and Assets in Cyberspace So what are the cyberrisks and the digital assets that we already alluded to? Cyberspace presents a constantly evolving challenge for individuals, business leaders and governments around the world, with increased malicious activity on all levels. One of the main characteristics of cyberspace today is unprecedented connectivity. While this is the reason behind all the great benefits of digitalisation, it also means greater exposure to potential threats through increased linkages.  If a threat occurs through any of the interlinked interactions, your business is automatically involved in the potential chain reaction. For example, if one of your partners suffers a data breach, your business data may be leaked. While some things may be out of your control, having the overview and awareness of your interactions, already increases your chance of identifying risks before they halt your business and demand a costly recovery. Your digital assets include all the online material that makes or breaks the operation of your business. From your personal data, to your online accounts as well as your internal and external business content. Understanding how to safeguard these assets is embodied in the cybercapacity concept and the accompanying cybersecurity toolbox.  For a detailed rundown on the definitions as well as first steps to building your cybercapacity, we recommend to check out a previous article of ours here. More exposure of your brand in cyberspace opens up incredible growth opportunities, yet it also increases your chances of falling on the path of malicious actors. Taken together, a strong cybercapacity is the foundation for your brand to survive and thrive in the cyberspace of today. Promise of Digital Trust to Your ClientsFrom the interlinkages illustrated above, it is clear that your digital assets are further linked with the assets of your clients. Digital trust in today’s business environment entails making a promise of security and privacy to your whole ecosystem and upholding this by implementing the necessary measures. You are responsible for making relevant changes to ensure the integrity of your interactions in cyberspace to the best of your abilities.
At the end of the day, your brand and your business is about your clients. It is important to make sure that you do everything you can to provide the value that you do in the most secure way possible. After covering all your bases, you can then incorporate a genuine promise of digital trust into your brand communication. In the current environment, where the conversations on security and privacy are becoming increasingly more prominent, your brand has the opportunity to turn the cyberrisks of today into a competitive advantage. Are you up for the task? If you’re looking to explore how the CP Brand Framework can benefit your business further, we invite you to schedule a conversation here or become a freemium user of our Brand Identity Development Taster package here. Reconnecting with your brand identity - the core of your business - during times of disruption. A collaboration case study with Cyberconnecting and Midsun IKM.  Recently, Cyberconnecting had the opportunity to work with Midsun IKM, an innovative player in the field of silicone coatings and wildlife outages protective covers for high voltage networks. In response to the turbulent shifts experienced in 2020, Cyberconnecting helped guide the new IKM team in the process of uncovering and reconnecting with their brand identity and core business values.
Just like anything in life, your business is in a constant state of transformation. In order to turn the inevitable challenges that come your way into opportunities, your business needs to be built on a sturdy foundation. THE CHALLENGE: Facing disruption “As for any other company, 2020 brought with it new challenges,” Jacqueline López (Marketing Manager at IKM) notes, looking back at the previous year. “Covid-19 made us rethink the way we do business. Our sales strategy had to be rebuilt in order to keep having business meetings as usual and therefore gain new customers, while being able to attend to the customer base we had already built since 2015,” she explains. “Not only did the pandemic affect our strategy, we also had to build a brand new team from scratch and that meant spending time on recruiting, training and adjusting the strategy to mix and match the new employees’ competences and qualifications into a new and more powerful company. We knew what needed to be done, the question was: how?!” Jacqueline says, outlining the situation in which IKM found itself last year. METHOD: Reconnecting with your brand identity At Cyberconnecting we start tackling challenges such as these with our Cyberpower Brand Framework. Research shows that there are 12 identity elements, which constitute the foundation of your brand and your business. Awareness of your identity composition connects you with the depth of your business values and helps build a strong foundation for shaping your business strategy. The Cyberpower Framework takes companies through the process of uncovering their identity components all the way through to strategically applying the newfound awareness in their business communication. “During the fall of 2020 we met with Dr Priya E. Abraham from Cyberconnecting to help us set out a new marketing and business strategy. We wanted to discover our main advantages as a business, our core audience and the way we should talk to them in order to increase revenue during these times of change,” Jacqueline says in hindsight. At Cyberconnecting, our collaboration with our clients always begins with the Brand Identity Tool (BIT). This is a data-driven, research-based approach, which helps uncover the identity elements that each team member activates the most, as well as the elements that could still be tapped into for further business development. “The first step was for each of our team members to fill out the BIT questionnaire, in order to discover the true identity of Midsun IKM as a brand. Each member got individual (and private!) feedback. It turned out that wellbeing and ethnicity ranked as highly important elements for our employees. From that moment we knew that our new strategy should be built around them,” Jacqueline highlights. The idea is to help uncover each team member’s individual identity, which contributes to the composite identity of the whole team and therefore the business. The aim of the private feedback sessions is to engage each team member in the process individually. Once everyone is onboard, the whole team then receives an aggregate report, which reflects the identity of the whole business.  RESULTS: Your business transformation impactThrough a moderated team-wide process, the brand identity results can be further applied in business strategy and communication. For IKM, their most activated identity elements - wellbeing and ethnicity - helped reconnect their team with the core values of their business.  “The ethnicity element ranked high because each of our team members comes from a different country, even a different continent. Together, we speak 12 languages. That allows us to communicate with virtually everyone around the world and adapt to their specific needs, cultural and negotiation backgrounds. Now, every sales employee has a sector of the world that they are responsible for, our catalogues, brochures and website are published in 5 languages and our Youtube videos are subtitled in at least 2 languages,” Jacqueline reflects on the insights gained from the BIT process. “As for the wellbeing element, the company started leading employee engagement initiatives like mini-retreats to practice sports together, special lunches, educational workshops and hours off when all the goals of the week or month are met. Also, we started giving more attention to the fact that our products not only prevent power outages, they can also help protect animals by allowing them to roam freely around high voltage installations without getting hurt,” she says, touching on the internal wellbeing of the team as well as the external impact of their company on environmental wellbeing.  “Now, over a semester later, we have been able to restructure our communication and improve our online presence following the recommendations from Cyberconnecting. As a result, we have gotten more client engagement, more interactions with sales leads, positive comments, newsletter subscriptions and overall a better relationship with our customers,” Jacqueline reports. By becoming aware of your unique identity composition, you can make informed decisions around their strategic positioning and the narrative of your brand. This supports authenticity, differentiation on a competitive market and a consistent communication style, stretching from the core of your business to the messaging that reaches your wider ecosystem. The collaboration with IKM was an exciting challenge for both Cyberconnecting and the IKM team. Adaptability is the key to survival in the inevitable turbulent shifts of our modern world and IKM has been an exemplary collaboration partner meeting the challenge head on! For more info on what IKM is working on, check out their blog here.  By Priya E. Abraham and Marya Wilson  The buzz around the words “remote work” has become a lot more prominent after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our previous understandings of “normal.” The world has, however, been moving towards remote work for already some time. Are business leaders ready to rise to the occasion and leverage this challenge? You bet they are. There has been a strong tie to the roots of the industrial revolution. “I need you on the line.” “9-5 is our day.” “I need you in the office.” “I have to see you to know you are really working.” This tie to history was shifting but still not embraced. COVID-19 changed this trend, with a lot of resistance and opposition. Until… The trends of working remotely have shown more success than anticipated. Increased productivity, higher levels of morale, focus on personal and professional goals to benefit more individuals and organisations, and wider market visibility have led leaders of all types and in all industries to recognise that advancing remote is an asset, not a liability. While we do see attempts to return to the office, many business leaders around the world are recognising the value of remote work. We will never be away from the office permanently, we are social beings. We will, however, take advantage of the unlimited opportunities that remote work can provide. Overcoming the Real Obstacle of Remote WorkThe struggles of remote work are present and real. Those struggles also present immense opportunity. Let’s start with the first of the struggles. The number of self-help articles on “Tips for working from home” represent how often these struggles are expressed as personal ones – ranging from motivation to the creation of personal routines. It is true that with such a transition, personal struggles and adjustments will definitely play a big role. Nonetheless, when it comes specifically to remote work and its impact on the company, we should actually start from the company perspective. If employees are struggling to get their work done effectively, if team productivity is taking a hit or if “company culture” is seemingly no longer existent – the problem is that the company has not yet become a mature remote business. The idea that your company can progress as a remote business illustrates that after overcoming the initial struggles, you can seize a whole new world of opportunity. This brings us to the benefits. Becoming a company that acknowledges the value of remote work illustrates a degree of flexibility that is crucial in surviving the unpredictable turns that the modern world presents. Even outside times of crisis, we are operating in an extremely fast-changing environment. Being ready to accommodate different employee needs and changing circumstances, adds to the success of a modern business. Assessing Your Remote Business Maturity So, how do we go about increasing remote business maturity? This can be operationalised in the Remote Business Design model, which illustrates how businesses evolve. This model helps assess a company's stage of remote readiness. It also provides a basis for your business to progress through the five levels from physical manifestation to a virtual organisation, outperforming traditional businesses. The further your business goes on the remote maturity stages, the more important cybercapacity – comprising cybersecurity and privacy - becomes. Depending on the digital maturity and available resources, many vacancies, which have traditionally required a physical presence, are also innovating. It appears that in the future, physiotherapists can, for example, benefit from physiorobots for the initial mobilisation of patients. Or hotel check-in staff can benefit from self-check-in or even welcoming robotic creatures to replace their physical presence. The world is indeed changing, but for now, our focus remains mainly on the companies, for which going fully remote is already a possibility. Leading Successfully in the Remote WorldSynergistic leadership is invaluable with the remote work environment, and the Remote Business Design Model. Leaders build influential relationships working toward goals and objectives, sharing purpose, and creating value. Successful leaders understand that leadership focuses on understanding the synergy of the organisation. All of the moving parts of the organisation play a key role in the success and growth of an organisation. All of us are more familiar with this leadership model in the face-to-face environment. In the remote environment, this approach does not change. The modes of operating do and without changing our lens of the working environment, this is where remote leadership can be difficult. The Synergistic Leadership Model can help frame how you want to work remotely. More rewarding, it focuses on relationship building and growth, individually and organisationally. The Remote Business Design Model and Synergistic Leadership Model complement one another and equip business leaders with the tools to analyse their current state of remote readiness and provide direction for how to facilitate the transformation. Exploring the Remote Business Design Model  Stage 1 - Ignore: The basic level is where many companies were when they were forced to go remote – business leaders were resistant to remote trends due to a lack of trust and digital capacity. Stage 2 - Unfreeze: The second stage reflects the events following the initial shift to remote in March 2020. Companies accepted that work is going to happen at home for the foreseeable future, yet denied that this means deeper structural changes. Adoption of tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams was carried out, but everyone had to be virtually present during all traditional “work hours” and employees’ working days were often full of interruptions. Stage 3 - Experiment: Stage 3 is where companies recognise that their current state is an unproductive replication of the physical environment and that effort should be put into better adjusting to the new circumstances. At this stage, changes are nonetheless random and fragmented. Stage 4 - Align: Stage 4 is when the beneficial results of those early investments start to appear. This stage is a crucial one. It can be characterised by changes such as:
All in all, this is when the truly diverse team feels included and valued. Stage 5 - Actualise & Maintain Momentum: At the final stage, your business processes are fully digitalised. Your team’s cybercapacity is fluent. They collaborate remotely with ease. Everyone in your company has time for wellness and mental health. When your people bring their highest levels of creativity and presence to deliver the best work, they delight your clients. Maintaining this momentum requires continuous renewal and review of the flow of your business processes. Exploring the Synergistic Leadership Model  Leadership is an influence-based relationship that seeks change and growth with shared purpose and values among all stakeholders. The synergic leadership model builds on this by strengthening the interaction of all of the parts of the organisation. There are five stages to our Synergistic Leadership Model: Stage 1: Unknown Change is a constant in our organisations. The unknown is the need, want, and excitement for this change. Sometimes this unknown is forced. Even forced, it is an opportunity for improvement and growth. Stage 2: Expectations Unknowns lead to ideas, strategy, task, and more. The next step is to make our unknowns clear and set a strategic direction. Understanding the vision, strategy, and expectations of our needs, wants, and desires will ensure we journey in the right direction. Stage 3 - Performance It is time to perform. Making our expectations a reality takes an operational approach with a little sprinkling of excitement and energy. It is vital that we obtain and effectively manage the resources we need to meet our expectations. Our resources include everything from people who can help, the tools and materials to do the work, the financing, and an attitude of change. Stage 4 - Consideration Once we are in full operating mode, it is vital to measure the progress toward our strategic goals and objectives. Many organizations call these measurements. The Strategic Leadership Model calls it, “How are we doing?” It is a question that focuses on data, but also the human element. It is vital to know the numbers and the stories behind those numbers. Stage 5 - Honour We must celebrate successes, even small wins. The work we do is hard and rewarding, and we reward ourselves with a celebration. It is also vital to honor your losses. Our losses are learning experiences. As hard as those losses can be, there is a lesson in the experience. Celebrate that experience too. Finally, no leadership model can exist without communication and compassion. Both of these elements hug these five stages and ensure they are nurtured for growth. Living, Breathing, Evolving OnlineThe Remote Business Design Model and the Synergistic Leadership Model do not end with maturity. Cybercapacity and Honour are the most important of all the stages. Strong foundations are built, and great entrepreneurs and leaders recognise that these foundations and processes require continuous renewal. Being successful remotely requires a solid business design, cybersavvy, and synergistic leadership. Your business is living, breathing, and always evolving.
If you are interested in exploring how the models can specifically benefit your business, get in touch! We would be delighted to help you leverage the outstanding opportunity of remote work.  Branding can be perceived as the be-all and end-all when it comes to establishing and scaling your business. On the one hand, for good reason - your brand embodies the experience you want your clients to have and it keeps them connected to you. On the other, the endless hype has given rise to many “quick-fix” branding guidelines that do not provide companies all the answers they need. While such solutions tend to cover useful basics such as identifying your target audience, establishing your mission and creating your elevator pitch, they also remain on surface level. Research shows that there are 12 identity elements, which constitute the key success factors of growing your brand in cyberspace. Awareness of your identity composition connects you with the depth of your business values and helps build a strong foundation for shaping your brand. This process - from uncovering your identity components to strategically applying the newfound awareness in your business communication - is combined in the Cyberpower Brand Framework. Below, we unpack the layers of the framework and highlight the importance of reaching identity awareness before starting to implement the basics. Uncovering Your Brand IdentityYour identity forms the core of your business and all your interactions. Your unique identity composition is made up of the elements you activate the most and the ones you activate the least. Both categories present opportunities to sharpen your brand strategy and refine your business marketing directions. Maximising your most active identity elements or tapping into the least activated ones, can help specify new audience segments and improve your messaging. For example, a consultant who has thus far targeted startup founders, could find out that their identity better aligns with a narrower audience of female founders instead of a wider mix. This knowledge helps sharpen brand messaging and curate content for a specific audience that can derive greater value out of the provided products or services. By becoming aware of your unique identity composition, you can make informed decisions around your strategic positioning and the narrative of your brand. Moreover, this supports authenticity and a consistent communication style, stretching from the core of your business to the messaging that reaches your wider ecosystem. Safeguarding Your Digital Assets in CyberspaceBut beyond the content-side of your brand, making a promise of digital security and privacy is now becoming the gold standard of business, as most of our interactions have moved to cyberspace. The measures and behaviours that fall under this promise can be summed up with the term cybercapacity.  Most SMEs, solopreneurs and freelancers do not prioritise investing resources into the development of a strong cybercapacity foundation. Unfortunately, this is often linked with the misleading belief of many small businesses around being “too small” or “insignificant” to fall on the radar of malicious cyber actors. But the size of a company does not provide protection from any cyberrisks. In fact, the likelihood of small businesses having a weaker cybercapacity can be a good enough reason for becoming a target. Furthermore, risks in digital space also stretch beyond the common understanding of a cyberattack initiated by a hacker. For example, without an appropriate backup system and routine, you may lose valuable client material as a result of a technical accident with your computer that happens on your own accord. Seemingly small aspects of our own behaviour can put the digital integrity of our assets and interactions at risk. With the right guidelines, however, implementing basic cybercapacity measures and behaviours is not as complicated as it may seem. Positioning this as the foundation of your brand, especially if most of your interactions have become digital, is a valuable investment of your time. It ensures that the powerful story that you brand can become remains protected from the inevitable cyberrisks that are evolving by the day. To get started with the first steps of building your cybercapacity, check out our free Cyberpower Challenge: Developing Your Brand Communication According to the Cyberpower Framework, the two components of uncovering your core identity and safeguarding your digital assets form the foundation of your business and all your interactions. Once you have reached a level of awareness around your identity and established a strong protective cybercapacity shield, you are ready to develop the rest of your brand communication. By starting with these two components, you ensure that you can radiate authentic values as well as digital trust through all layers of interaction. Quick fixes have the merit of ticking the boxes of basic brand components individually. But a comprehensive framework brings these together strategically and helps establish a captivating brand, while laying out a path towards sustainable growth. Before filling the separate rooms of the house that is your brand, it is worth laying a sturdy foundation in order for your brand to withstand the test of competition and support the growth potential of your business. Interested in exploring further?
Check out the free taster package for the brand identity tool here. Or schedule a conversation to discuss how the Cyberpower Brand Framework can best benefit you:  Third in a series of three articles on SME cloud migration. In the first two articles of our cloud migration series, we focused on why cloud migration presents a lifeline for SMEs and how to get started with the journey. Our last edition highlights the considerations for maintaining momentum once your cloud journey has taken off. To secure the benefits you seek to gain from moving to the cloud, your cloud strategy should factor in an adjustment period, following the success of the technical migration stage. This transition period aims to maintain the momentum gained during the cloud journey and ensures that your business secures the benefits cloud has to offer. One of the primary foundations for this momentum is formed through your organisation’s cybercapacity, which is reinforced through a privacy-first culture. Strengthening Your Team Through Cloud MigrationFor many SMEs, a limited cybercapacity is one of the underlying obstacles in the way of maximising the benefits of the cloud, and cyberspace at large. The cybercapacity concept can be viewed as an umbrella covering all the components you need to safeguard your business in cyberspace, spanning issues involved in cybersecurity and privacy. Chief Information Security Officers, or CISOs, have often disclosed to me that many team members are even unaware if the software they use is hosted in the cloud or on premise. This is directly connected to our advice in the previous article - to identify a potential skills and knowledge gap and develop an employee training plan to address it during your cloud journey process. Follow up on the training and monitor your team’s progress for a defined period of time after the technical migration has been completed. What should your team’s cybercapacity training entail? We suggest going back to the basics and embedding this into the wider context of your cloud strategy. For example, map out the “before and after'' changes that cloud migration will bring for you and your team. Shine a light on the implications for their daily tasks. Which safeguarding behaviours should your team keep in mind and why? The development of your organisation’s cybercapacity entails a change in mindset on cybersecurity and on privacy, which requires a better understanding of the topic at hand. For actionable advice on first steps, check out our article on building digital trust, which dives deeper into the topic of cybercapacity building. Migrating to the cloud requires that organisations build capabilities to mitigate cyberrisk caused by human behaviour, as well as reducing opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit human weaknesses. Behaviour change and an effective workplace culture is an iterative process. Revisiting the basics of your cybercapacity on a regular basis is one of the most valuable long-term investments you can make to strengthen the future of your business. Raised awareness of our behaviours as well as developing our own cybersecurity and privacy should be an integral element of the workplace culture. Transforming into a Cybercapable Organisation with CloudTransformation of the workplace culture is vital for a successful journey to the cloud. As we established when looking at the human factor of cloud migration, it all starts with change enablement and empowering your networked team employees to adopt new ways of working. One of the ways of approaching this cultural change is by seeking to establish a privacy-first culture. This entails a reciprocal process among leaders and teams and considers how the technical and human capabilities related to identity come through in digital collaboration. Your cloud migration presents an opportunity to better conceptualise your team’s digital interactions, the process of which goes a long way in securing the benefits available in the cloud. If you’re interested to find out more about the essence of building a privacy-first culture, check out another one of our articles, where we take a further look into what the process entails. Culture is not automatically built - it is enacted through people’s identity. This is specifically so, when it comes to remote teams, which many organisations have become during the COVID-19 crisis. So what can leaders do to create and sustain a privacy-first culture from afar? It starts with digital trust. It takes an intentional and continuous effort to role-model and foster cybersavvy behaviours to build and maintain digital trust among the team and with clients. When your organisation is successful in empowering change in culture, you’ll be able to enjoy the many benefits of cloud migration while minimising – if not fully eliminating – its dark side and thereby maximising the bright side. A successful journey to the cloud, can be recognised when all the technical pieces start to fall into place within the context of a wider culture shift. Looking for personalised guidance on increasing your company’s cybercapacity or aligning your communication with your company’s brand identity? or check out the to get ahead.
Second in a series of three articles on SME cloud migration.  In the first article of the SME cloud migration series, we established the benefits of the cloud-first strategy. In our second edition, we proceed to move from the why to the how. The increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions means that the internet is full of handy suggestions for the tools at the disposal of small businesses. For a recent overview, we’d suggest Techradar’s list of best small business software for 2020 as well as our own suggestions for secure remote tools from the beginning of the year. The less talked about cornerstone of a successful cloud journey, is nonetheless the human factor in addition to the technical. The Importance of a Team-Wide Cloud Migration StrategyThis comes down to transformation enablement - guiding your enterprise, its networked team and management, through the process of adapting their work behaviour in order to adopt new ways of working. One of the main reasons behind the complexities of cloud migration is the lack of transformation enablement within the organisation which starts well before the adoption of new technology. Transformation enablement is a continuous process, which assists your organisation by defining more efficient ways of working and in proving the value the migration will bring to your team. For instance, if an organisation wanted to encourage the adoption of a new cloud service, it might first communicate the purpose and benefits of the cloud service to its networked teams and management through internal project marketing. It might then pursue training and further education with the people development team and only then develop an external communication strategy with the assistance of its marketing team. On the technical side, it would develop a Proof of Concept (PoC), which would outline the advantages of the migration to the technical team and gain buy-in from decision-makers.  Consolidating Your Transformation Enablement StrategyTo ensure success in adoption of any new cloud project, decision-makers must be organised and communicate their needs effectively with their team. Here is a quick preparation list for decision-makers to keep in mind when collaborating with the transformation specialist:
Cloud migration, as any other substantial procedural transformation, requires getting every member of the enterprise on board with the project. Besides the technical how-to, it is therefore just as important to consolidate a strong internal strategy to ensure success in your cloud migration journey. Get in touch to further explore how this applies to your business specifically:  First in a series of three articles on SME cloud migration. Many SMEs embody enormous growth potential. Yet in our line of work, we often witness the struggles that hold growth back. The underlying pain points are usually related to:
The key to counter these issues lies in digitalisation enabled via the cloud. The growing availability of cloud-based solutions means that SMEs have more opportunities to scale their business than ever before. Although “cloud” has been the topic of the decade for a while, its benefits, migration strategies and maintenance is still a confusing terrain for many. In order to clarify the landscape, let’s start from the beginning - why cloud? The answer, as you will see, boils down to scalability. Transform the Elasticity of Infrastructure with CloudOn a technical level, cloud represents an elastic form of infrastructure - the opposite of any physical servers or data centres. This elasticity comes to life, for example, through the possibility of quick (and, if necessary, short notice) changes in storage or network capacity, in line with business needs. SMEs are often in the process of strengthening their footing in their industry landscape. In circumstances, where a business might see a sudden increase (or decrease) in the number of users or sales, changes need to be made quickly. Many companies experienced this during the COVID-19 crisis, where some saw a sudden increase in users (e.g. e-commerce platforms), with others needing to downsize (e.g. airlines). Outsourcing such capacity to a cloud service provider ensures flexibility to meet the demands of external forces. Smart Business Cost ReductionElasticity through digitalisation also ensures the freedom to pursue smart cost reduction. With the option to make changes in accordance to business needs, the company’s operational costs can be matched with relevant usage at all times. Beyond that, cloud services simply eliminate the costs of setting up and running a physical data centre of your own. Digitalisation through the cloud, helps outsource such an immense task to an external provider, for whom this is a sole responsibility. Cloud service providers usually charge on a flexible monthly or annual basis, which helps business leaders plan and optimise costs accordingly.  Cloud Migration to Ease Security ConcernsSecurity has been one of the main concerns with regard to cloud migration. It could however be argued that for SMEs, cloud helps tackle major security questions rather than create them. By today, providers tend to have better security systems than what small businesses have installed in their on-site data centres. A major disclaimer is nonetheless necessary here. Cloud service providers’ security guarantees are only effective in combination with a strong baseline of the business’ own cybercapacity and ability to audit the provider. This means that your company must adhere to basic cyberhygiene measures, strengthen your cybercapacity and have secure systems in place in order to fully safeguard the company. SMEs are therefore still responsible for auditing the trust placed in the service provider. Enable Remote and Foster Innovation with CloudOnce you have successfully implemented your cloud-first strategy, you have established a solid foundation upon which true innovation may flourish. Cloud ensures location-independent accessibility, where data and applications are available at all times. This paves the way for building remote teams and thereby tapping into a whole new world of talent. We have also seen that cloud migration inspires employees and teams to think about their jobs from a different angle. They start seeing possibilities in their work processes that were previously consolidated within more rigid systems. Availability and flexibility tends to lead to more effective collaboration, which in turn fuels creativity. Digitalisation as a LifelineCloud therefore ensures scalability not only through technical infrastructure but also by empowering your team. Business landscapes are changing faster than ever before. The adoption of a cloud-first strategy is becoming crucial, in order to be able to simultaneously adapt and grow in these circumstances. Cloud is no longer a luxury for large enterprises, but a lifeline for SMEs.
Next up in the series: How to start your cloud migration journey? Get in touch to further explore how this applies to your business specifically:  The buzz around the words “remote work” has become a lot more prominent after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our previous understandings of “normal.” The world has however been moving towards remote work for already some time. Are business leaders ready to rise to the occasion and leverage this challenge? The strong social momentum for working outside your home has its roots in the industrial revolution. The 1900s saw the beginning of the rise for what we now know as the “9-to-5, modern office routine.” Nonetheless, ever since the dawn of the first personal computers and the development of greater connectivity, we have slowly been moving in the opposite direction. Previously, the trend has perhaps been slowed down by the concerns for employee productivity and negative impact on company culture. Indeed, even with the brief “return to the office” that many countries experienced/are experiencing, the same concerns saw daylight yet again. But what we witnessed in March, is still seen as the tipping point in the remote work trend. Hundreds of millions of people were sent home to work in the matter of a few days and weeks – with no long-term preparation nor transition period. Although we are now seeing attempts of a slow return to the office, followed by a retreat back home, for many business leaders around the world, the past six months have opened their eyes to a new world of work. Overcoming the Real Obstacle of Remote WorkThe struggles around remote work are manifold. As with many things, so are its benefits. Let’s start with the first. The number of self-help articles on “Tips for working from home” represent how often these struggles are expressed as personal ones – ranging from motivation to the creation of personal routines. It is true that with such a transition, personal struggles and adjustments will definitely play a big role. Nonetheless, when it comes specifically to remote work and its impact on the company, we should actually start from the company perspective. If employees are struggling to get their work done effectively, if team productivity is taking a hit or if “company culture” is seemingly no longer existent – the problem is that the company has not yet become a mature remote business. The idea that your company can progress as a remote business illustrates that after overcoming the initial struggles, you can seize a whole new world of opportunity. This brings us to the benefits. Becoming a company that acknowledges the value of remote work illustrates a degree of flexibility that is crucial in surviving the unpredictable turns that the modern world presents. Even outside times of crisis, we are operating in an extremely fast-changing environment. Being ready to accommodate different employee needs and changing circumstances, adds to the success of a modern business. Assessing Your Remote Business MaturitySo, how do we go about increasing remote business maturity? This can be operationalised in the Remote Business Design model, which illustrates how businesses evolve.  This model helps assess a company's stage of remote readiness. It also provides a basis for your business to progress through the five levels from physical manifestation to a virtual organisation, outperforming traditional businesses. The further your business goes on the remote maturity stages, the more important cybercapacity – comprising cybersecurity and privacy - becomes. Depending on the digital maturity and available resources many vacancies, which have traditionally required a physical presence, are also innovating. It appears that in the future, physiotherapists can, for example, benefit from physiorobots for the initial mobilisation of patients. Or hotel check-in staff can benefit from self-check-in or even welcoming robotic creatures to replace their physical presence. The world is indeed changing, but for now, our focus remains mainly on the companies, for which going fully remote is already a possibility.
This stage is a crucial one. It is at this point that the transition from stage one to increasingly more advanced stages starts bearing the most fruit. It can be characterised by:
All in all, this is when the truly diverse team feels included and valued.
As mentioned above, at this stage of maturity, cybercapacity is the most important out of all other stages. Only with a strong foundation of tightly secured processes is your business able to thrive with remote work. On top of that, we must recognise that this process requires continuous renewal. If we accept that the world in which we operate is in a continuous state of transformation, we should also accept that once we reach a certain stage, there will be new circumstances which will require us to adapt again. Organisation Development Through Going RemoteWhen you progress through the five stages of becoming a truly virtual organisation, you begin to perform better than any in-person company. In our constantly changing world, this is a genuine opportunity. This stage of success is reached when your business processes are fully digitalised, the cybercapacity of your team is fluent and collaboration takes place with ease.
The overarching valuable impact of reaching the final stage is not only remote work focused. It also means that as a leader, you have created the conditions, in which everyone in your company has time for themselves - their wellness and mental health as well as their personal life outside of work. Even when things “return to normal,” the effects of building up a remote business will carry on into any other circumstances. This is because at its core, remote work is about flexibility and leveraging the tools we have at our disposal. Maybe some people prefer to get some office time for various reasons and prefer a “return” once that is possible again. But given the flexibility of your business design, this means that the needs of every single person in your team are considered. Inclusion in such form can only be of benefit for your business. When your people are able to bring their highest levels of creativity and presence to deliver their best work, they delight your clients and help grow your business. As an entrepreneur, you will repeatedly experience times of crises. Unlocking a remote work culture, which is tightly based on a strong cybercapacity and reflected in your brand communication is vital for business continuity in times of disruption. Get in touch to further explore how this applies to your business specifically:  Cracking simple and common passwords, such as ‘123456’ or ‘password’ literally takes less than a second. With the prevalence of such passwords, it is no surprise that this has become one of the most common ways for hackers to gain access to your digital assets. This is important for you, as a business leader or a remote worker, because such methods easily pave the way for identity theft, financial fraud and data breaches. This is especially true, if you are working with a geographically dispersed team or network of clients. That’s why the basic requirements for password security have become so widespread:
While important, this traditional sequence of advice tends to be counterproductive in achieving sustainable password security and effective behavioural change. Why? Consider this: Almost every large organisation routinely requires their employees to change their passwords. Employees, whose main tasks and competence may be connected to human resources, marketing, project management etc. Naturally, what these employees do not focus on among their daily responsibilities is cybersecurity. When this time of the updating cycle comes around, they are presented with the same requirements.  Without effective training, these employees are therefore also likely to be lacking the acknowledgement of the actual impact of password security. This means that due to the inconvenience that yet another routine password change creates:
So when it comes down to the statement, “humans are the weakest link in cybersecurity” - password management is one of the most relevant examples of its application, especially when it comes to remote work. Our online accounts hold more critical data about us than ever before. And if the keys to this data are weak or easily hacked - so is your identity, financial details and much more. Organising Passwords: Advice that worksAs a business leader, you may therefore ask - if the traditional guidelines for password security do not work, what does? Perhaps we should reorder this advice. Instead of making your team reset their password every 3 months, let’s make the overarching goal: creating a sustainable password management system. By today, we have a great selection of password management software to choose from. This software enables encrypted and secure password storage, effective methods for access sharing as well as helps you generate secure passwords in accordance to proven requirements. An effective system benefits you and your business by:
For practical password management tools and a list of trusted online providers, check here what suits your needs best: Password Security Risks to Acknowledge and DodgeAs awareness around password security increases, it is logical that browsers and other online tools are trying to catch up, integrating and simplifying user experience. You may have noticed that many browsers are now suggesting secure passwords and their storage upon a new password setup. This seems like a modern and definitely comfortable solution. But browser-based password storage comes with its risks and we would not recommend this approach. The reason behind this is the following: If you opt in for browser-based password storage, your browser will store a database of your login information. This database is often unencrypted. If a hacker were to gain access to your computer or your browser - which is easier than you may think - they have access to ALL your logins at once. If you opt for the option of encrypted password storage on your computer, your passwords would be encrypted and protected by your chosen master password and inaccessible by your browser. For step-by-step guidelines on how to remove passwords from your browser, check out this resource by University of Iowa. Organising Passwords as a Team-wide EffortWhen it comes to business security, password management has to be a team-wide effort - even, and perhaps especially, if your team is working remotely. A personal password management system is easy to achieve - it only requires your own will and subsequent behavioural change. But if only a few members of a team follow effective guidelines, the security of your business is still at risk.
Cybersecurity is often seen as a luxury topic. Commonly, it tends to become a priority when an attack or “close call” has already taken place. All we can say to that, is we suggest you make it a priority ASAP. After the initial time investment, you will be left with an effective password management system that will also help you save time in the future. As much as possible, especially in SMEs and other small teams, this system setup should include the whole team. We recommend setting up an hour-long meeting time with your team in the near future to go through the initial setup process - from acquiring the software to agreeing on basic principles and a personalised password update process. No doubt this requires behavioural changes and therefore a little bit of commitment, but the resulting security is worth it. If you’re looking for more actionable advice on creating a sustainable password management system and perhaps a step-by-step guide, check out Day 2 of the free Cyberpower Challenge here for more information. Once you’re ready to take the next steps to upgrade your cybersecurity, check out our other offerings on the Cyberpower Academy and stay tuned for our upcoming course on Assembling Your Cybersecurity Toolbox. |
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June 2021
P.E. AbrahamDigital transformation strategist | Privacy advisor | Cyber anthropologist | Author Categories
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