Space utilisation and expansion – Are both needed?

Considerations for those who need onsite people presence

The “new norm” is here – flexible remote working will be ‘business as usual’ for many organisations however there is still a huge requirement for onsite people presence.

As many organisations, such as universities, colleges, councils, hospitals and emergency services, adapt to the challenges lockdown has created, many of them have to plan for social distancing to allow a return to some normality in order to continue to operate effectively. As part of the planning, both space utilisation and expansion is critical to meet previous requirements whilst at the same time, ensure government guidance for social distancing is adhered to.

More space to do less?

This means that technology needs to reach across the entire real-estate both internally, outside and remotely, utilising space which has never been considered before in order to accommodate the distancing rules. This is where secure, reliable and long-reach WiFi plays an integral role in order to facilitate network connectivity to wherever the people are who need it.

Technologies such as WiFi6 provides a range of benefits for all users including support for IoT devices as they become more prevalent. Cyber security remains critical, as does ensuring the integrity of the network as required by all user types.

Eduroam has fantastic presence across the UK and we are seeing new federated systems such as Govroam also spanning between the education, government and healthcare sectors. These systems allow greater freedom and roaming, including the use of remote access points and VPN access. Federated systems need excellent secure national and local authentication and role provisioning which is scalable, monitorable and supportable.

At the same time, organisations are relying further on cloud-based systems which entails a different approach to traditional security and new systems to identify and mitigate ever increasing cyber threats. We have seen a significant rise in threats (including phishing, malware and vulnerability probing) across our customer base during the COVID-19 crisis,  where criminals are seeking to take advantage of potentially weaker security.

Whilst the COVID-19 crisis has had a dreadful impact causing significant risk to life, lost livelihoods and forever changed the way the majority view all aspects of personal and business lives, we believe that we are fortunate that technology has reached a level which has allowed the world to adapt swiftly, we just need to ensure the security and integrity of the data we entrust to the technology.