Business
Beating Burnout – Arise the transformational IT leader

Jen Brown, Senior Director, EMEA at GoTo
Burnout and stress continue to be prevalent in the workplace, yet few industries are feeling the burn quite as intensely as IT. You just have to look at the figures to prove that new pressures and pain points just keep adding to the workloads of IT leaders. New global 2023 research targeting Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) found burnout and stress to be the most significant personal risk CISOs face in their role today, for the second consecutive year. Not only that, but the number reporting burnout and stress jumped up notably year on year. A recent GoTo study found that 65% of businesses say their IT team workloads have increased over the last year, with 92% reporting that reducing this burden is a critical consideration when choosing their IT software.
What’s behind the burnout?
Recent years have meant that IT Professionals have had to make hard work and agility their mission critical. As the need for tech in business keeps ramping up, IT teams have doubled down like never before to lay all the right foundations for business success and survival. The old protocols are out while ushered in are hybrid and work from anywhere teams and rapid digital transformation with more devices and infinite data to secure far beyond the secure perimeters of the office.
The new working world has arrived with a bang and IT Professionals have never been as critical to or as synonymous with its success. But with that shift comes the white-hot heat of demanding hours and smaller teams as businesses do battle against cost of living and talent shortage challenges. IT pros have been working at pace to protect their teams at all costs but with sky high reports of elevated burnout, it’s clear these levels of stress are unworkable in the long term. The only end result will be driving good talent out of the industry completely.
A new style of leadership
Today, we need a total rethink and reset on how we turn the tide on the worrying burnout trend. Business demands are evolving and so too must the role of IT leaders. Once upon a time IT leaders were a siloed part of most businesses, beavering away without complaint in the background. Today they are an indispensable bridge between the C-suite and an entire organisation’s security posture, working to drive value and buy-in to IT management and security in ways that resonate with everyone at every level across a workforce.
As the world becomes increasingly built on software, today the transformational IT leader must map out a future where consolidation and smarter more streamlined ways of working are all the name of the game. This approach must bring together the very best in both technology and people strategies. It’s essential groundwork but consolidating tech, automating workflows and embedding streamlining into the approach are all essential parts of the process. This will allow IT leaders to make smart choices that empowers teams. Today the transformational IT leader is more than ever a people manager who is charged primarily with helping workforces change their behaviours to support the working world of today. Here’s what a transformational IT leader needs to have in their roadmap right now:
Success through streamlining
Consolidation among SMBs has become increasingly popular as decision makers start to acknowledge its many benefits. The main advantages being increased productivity, lower costs, and ease of management.
The recent report on IT Priorities sees 83% of businesses considering consolidation of communication and IT management and support tools an important initiative for 2023. Crucially, this consolidation helps to alleviate the burden on IT, a key goal for 92% of the report’s respondents. It can do this by providing greater oversight and control for less money whilst increasing employee productivity – a golden triangle of outcomes amid the current economic headwinds.
Consolidation of tools is even more valuable when IT teams are provided with a comprehensive view of operations. Unifying status updates, performance insights, and more information in a single dashboard to control and monitor processes, through a remote monitoring tool, can dramatically improve workflows and enable quick resolutions without overburdening IT teams.
Automation: paving the way for increased efficiency
For businesses that do not have dedicated support staff to handle administrative, customer service, or other time-consuming tasks, IT automation tools can be the difference between growth or stagnation. Automating tedious tasks frees up time for teams to focus on projects that require detailed human attention and move the business forward, allowing companies to allocate resources more effectively. It can also serve as a morale boosting tactic, helping employees to tick more off their never-ending to-do list by giving them valuable time back to focus on more fulfilling tasks.
Furthermore, automating certain business practices helps to alleviate the stress put on individuals and avoid bottlenecks at the same time. Simplifying tasks and responsibilities means that teams aren’t left in limbo if colleagues are out sick or away from their desk – knowledge and workloads can easily be shared and managed without direct management.
For all these reasons, built-in automation features are considered absolutely critical when choosing new business solutions. Moreover, integrations with new generative AI technologies like ChatGPT are introducing even more valuable automation capabilities across applications like customer engagement, generating and running programming scripts, and more. AI chatbots can also aid in IT ticket deflection and resolution which would otherwise need to be opened and worked on by support staff. All of this means that AI tools are increasingly handling even complex tasks with minimal time and resources required from human team members.
Collaboration and pooling resources for greater impact
The final piece of the puzzle is complete when companies can make the most of the resources already available to them. By eliminating the limitations of a traditional in-office mindset, businesses can combine resources by region and empower transformational IT teams to offer support from anywhere, anytime.
A company with multiple offices around the country can still effectively operate with one shared IT team to look after different regions. Additionally, implementing unified problem management processes across teams and employee locations can ensure faster resolution times when incidents do occur, and significantly reduce the potential for subsequent disruptions. Sharing resources and practices in this way can save significant costs, reduce downtimes, and improve efficiency. And with 50% of businesses still using hybrid workplace models, IT management needs to reflect this flexibility.
This is why features such as unattended access and multi-session handling are now considered essential. A remote access tool can not only minimise operational downtime and ensure continuity, but also save on travel expenses and office costs – allowing IT teams to support customers and colleagues from anywhere in the world. Additionally, when companies no longer need to worry about providing support in close physical proximity to their employees, this also means that companies can recruit and source the top talent for the job they need, regardless of their location.
The road ahead
In times of uncertainty, budgets are squeezed, and workloads are stretched to capacity. Ultimately, the keys to success during such times are streamlining technology and prioritising the people that make up a workforce. By looking for ways to consolidate their technology stack, automating menial tasks where possible, and pooling resources, companies can reinvest money into employees and customers instead. Let’s lean into these approaches so we beat burnout and help put people first in today’s workplace.
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Business
‘Tis the Season to be Wary: How to Protect Your Business from Holiday Season Hacking

The holiday season will soon be in full swing, but cybercriminals aren’t known for their holiday spirit. While consumers have traditionally been the prime targets for cybercriminals during the holiday season – lost in a frenzy of last-minute online shopping and unrelenting ads – companies are increasingly falling victim to calculated cyber attacks.
Against this backdrop of relaxed vigilance and festive distractions, cybercriminals are set to deploy everything from ransomware to phishing scams, all designed to capitalise on the holiday haze. Businesses that fail to prioritise their cybersecurity could end up embracing not so much “tidings of comfort and joy” as unwanted data breaches and service outages well into 2024.
Threat Landscape
With the usual winter disruptions about to kick into overdrive, opportunistic hackers are aiming to exploit organisational turmoil this holiday season. Industry research consistently indicates a substantial spike in cyber attacks targeting businesses during holidays, particularly when coupled with the following factors:
- Employee Burnout: Employee burnout is rife around the holidays. Trying to complete major projects or hit targets before the end of the year can require long hours and intense workweeks. Overwrought schedules combined with the seasonal stressors of Christmas shopping, family politics, travel expenses, hosting duties etc., can lead to a less effective and exhausted workforce.
- Vacation Days: The holiday season is a popular time for employees to use up their vacation days and paid time off. This means offices are often emptier than usual during late December and early January. With fewer people working on-site, critical security tasks are neglected and gaps in security widen.
- Network Strain: The holidays also mark a period of network strain due to increased traffic and network requests. Staff shortages also reduce organisational response capacity if systems are compromised. The result is company networks that are understaffed and overwhelmed.
Seasonal Cyber Attacks
There are many ways bad actors look to exploit system vulnerabilities and human errors to breach defences this time of year. But rather than relying solely on sophisticated hacking techniques, most holiday-fueled cyber attacks succeed through tried and true threat vectors:
- Holiday-Themed Phishing and Smishing Campaigns: Emails and texts impersonating parcel carriers with tracking notifications contain fraudulent links, deploying malware or capturing account credentials once clicked by unwitting recipients trying to track deliveries. A momentary slip-up is all it takes to unleash malware payloads granting complete network access.
- Fake Charity Schemes: Malicious links masquerading as holiday philanthropy efforts compromise business accounts when donated to.
- Remote Access Exploits: External connectivity to internal networks comes with the territory of the season. However, poorly configured cloud apps and public Wi-Fi access points create openings for criminals to intercept company data from inadequately protected employee devices off-site.
- Ransomware Presents: Empty offices combined with delayed threat detection gives innovative extortion malware time to wrap itself around entire company systems and customer data before unveiling a not so jolly ransom note on Christmas morning.
Without proper precautions, the impact from misdirected clicks or downloads can quickly spiral across business servers over the holidays, leading to widespread data breaches and stolen customer credentials.
Essential Steps to Safeguard Systems
While eliminating all risks remains unlikely and tight budgets preclude launching entirely new security initiatives this holiday season, businesses can deter threats and address seasonal shortcomings through several key actions:
Prioritise Core Software Updates
Hardening network infrastructure is the first line of defence this holiday season. With many software products reaching end-of-life in December, it is critical to upgrade network architectures and prioritise core software updates to eliminate known vulnerabilities. Segmenting internal networks and proactively patching software can cut off preferred access routes for bad actors, confining potential breaches when hacking attacks surge.
Cultivate a Culture of Cybersecurity Awareness
Cybersecurity awareness training makes employees more resilient to rising social engineering campaigns and phishing links that increase during the holidays. Refreshing employees on spotting suspicious emails can thwart emerging hacking techniques. With more distractions and time out of the office this season, vigilance is more important than ever! Train your staff to “never” directly click a link from an email or text. Even if they are expecting a delivery they should still go directly to the known trusted source.
Manage Remote Access Proactively
Criminals aggressively pursue any vulnerabilities exposed during the holiday period to intercept financial and customer data while defences lie dormant. Therefore, businesses should properly configure cloud apps and remote networks before the holiday season hits. This will minimise pathways for data compromise when employees eventually disconnect devices from company systems over the holidays.
Mandate Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
Most successful attacks stem from compromised user credentials. By universally mandating MFA across all access points this season, retailers add critical layers of identity verification to secure systems. With MFA fatigue setting in over holidays, have backup verification methods ready to deter credential stuffing.
Prepare to Respond, Not Just Prevent
Despite precautions, holiday disasters can and do occur. Businesses need response plans for periods of disruption and reduced capacity. Have emergency communications prepared for customers and partners in case an attack disrupts operations. The time to prepare is before vacation schedules complicate incident response. It’s important to know how and when to bring in the right expertise if a crisis emerges.
By following best practices to prevent cybersecurity standards slipping before peak winter months, companies can enjoy the holidays without becoming victims of calculated cyber attacks. With swift and decisive action there is still time for businesses to prepare defences against holiday season hacks.
Business
Transforming unified comms to future-proof your business

By Jonathan Wright, Director of Products and Operations at GCX
Telephony is not usually the first thing SMBs think about when it comes to their digital transformation. However, push and pull factors are bringing it up the priority list and leading them to rethink their approach.
Indeed, it is just one year until PSTN (the copper-based telephone network) will be switched off by BT Openreach. With a recent survey showing that as many as 88% of UK businesses rely on PSTN, many organisations’ hands are being forced to review their communications ahead of the deadline.
But even if this change for some is being forced upon them, the benefits of building a more future-proofed unified communications strategy far outweigh the associated challenges. Nearly three-quarters of employees in UK SMEs now work partly or fully remotely, indeed the highest percentage of any G7 country. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone systems are much better suited to distributed workforces as the phone line is assigned on a user basis, rather than to a fixed location.
And with more companies now integrating AI capabilities to augment their products and services – like Microsoft Teams Pro which leverages OpenAI for improved transcription, automated notes generation and recommended actions – the productivity-boosting benefits for users are only improving.
Making the right choice
For those companies that are seizing the opportunity to change their unified comms in 2024, what should they consider when making their decision?
- Choose platforms that will boost user adoption – User adoption will make or break the rollout of a new IT project. So due consideration should be given to what products or services will have the path of least resistance with employees. Choosing a service or graphical user interface (GUI) users are already used to, like Zoom or MS Teams, is likely to result in a higher adoption rate than a net new service.
- Embrace innovation with AI capabilities – While some of the services leveraging AI and Large Language Model (LLM) to enhance their capabilities are more expensive than traditional VoIP, the productivity gains could offer an attractive return on investment for many small businesses. Claiming back the time spent typing up meeting notes, or improving the response time to customer calls with automatically-generated actions, will both have tangible benefits to the business. That said, companies should consider what level of service makes sense to their business; they may not need the version with all the bells and whistles to make significant efficiency gains.
- Bring multiple services under a single platform – The proliferation of IT tools is becoming an increasing challenge in many businesses; it creates silos that hamper collaboration, leaves employees feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of communications channels to manage, and leads to mounting costs on the business. Expanding the use of existing platforms, or retiring multiple solutions by bringing their features together in one new platform, benefits the business and user experience alike.
- Automate onboarding to reduce the burden on IT – Any changes to unified comms should aim to benefit all of the different stakeholders – and that includes the IT team tasked with implementing and managing it. Choosing platforms which support automated onboarding and activation, for example, will reduce the burden on IT when provisioning new tenants, as well as with the ongoing policy management. What’s more, it reduces the risk of human error when configuring the setup to improve the overall security. Or, in the case of Microsoft Teams, even negates the need for Microsoft PowerShell.
- Consider where you work – Employees are not only working between home and the office more. Since the pandemic, more people are embracing the digital nomad lifestyle, while others are embracing the opportunity to work more closely with clients on-site or at their offices. This should be considered in unified comms planning as those companies with employees working outside the UK will need to choose a geo-agnostic service.
- Stay secure – Don’t let security and data protection be an afterthought. Opt for platforms leveraging authentication protocols, strong encryption, and security measures to safeguard sensitive information and support compliance.
Making the right switch
As many small businesses start planning for changes in their telephony in 2024 as the PSTN switch-off approaches, it is important that take the time to explore how the particular requirements of their organisations and how the changes to their communications could better support their new working practices and boost productivity.
Business
Will your network let down your AI strategy?

Rob Quickenden, CTO at Cisilion
As companies start to evaluate how they can use AI effectively, there is a clear need to ensure your network is up to the challenges of AI first. AI applications are going to require your data to be easily accessible and your network will need to be able to handle the huge compute needs of these new applications. It will also need to be secure enough at all points of access for the different applications to end users’ different devices. If your network isn’t reliable, readily available and secure it is likely going to fail.
In Cisco’s 2023 Networking Report 41% of networking professional across 2,500 global companies said that providing secure access to applications distributed across multiple cloud platforms is their key challenge, followed by gaining end-to-end visibility into network performance and security (37%).
So, what can you do to make your network AI ready?
First, you need to see AI as part of your digital transformation, then you need to look at where you need it and where you don’t. Jumping on the bandwagon and implementing AI for the sake of it isn’t the way forward. You need to have a clear strategy in place about where and how you are going to use AI. Setting up an AI taskforce to look at all aspects of your AI strategy is a good first step. They need to be able to identify how AI can help transform your business processes and free up time to focus on your core business. At the same time, they need to make sure your infrastructure can handle your AI needs.
Enterprise networks and IT landscapes are growing more intricate every day. The demand for seamless connectivity has skyrocketed as businesses expand their digital footprint and hybrid working continues. The rise of cloud services, the Internet of Things (IoT), and data-intensive applications have placed immense pressure on traditional network infrastructures and AI will only increase this burden. AI requires much higher levels of compute power too. The challenge lies in ensuring consistent performance, security, and reliability across a dispersed network environment.
Use hybrid and multi-cloud to de-silo operations
According to Gartner’s predictions, by 2025, 51% of IT spending will shift to the cloud. Underscoring the importance of having a robust and adaptable network infrastructure that can seamlessly integrate with cloud services. This is even more important with AI as it needs to access data from different locations and sources across your business to be successful. For example, AI often requires data from different sources to train models and make predictions. A company that wants to develop an AI system to predict customer churn may need to access data from multiple sources such as customer demographics, purchase history and social media activity.
IT teams need to make sure that they are using hybrid cloud and multi-cloud to de-silo operations to bring together network and security controls and visibility and allow for easy access to data. Where businesses use multiple cloud providers or have some data on-premise, they need to be reviewing how that data will be used and so how to access it across departments.
Install the best security and network monitoring
It’s clear that as we develop AI for good, there is also a darker side weaponizing AI to create more sophisticated cyber-attacks. Businesses need end-to-end visibility into their network performance and security and to be able to provide secure access to applications distributed across multiple cloud platforms. This means having effective monitoring tools in place and the right layers of security – not only at the end user level but also across your network at all access points.
Being able to review and test the performance of your SaaS based applications will also be key to the success of your AI solutions. AI requires apps to work harder and faster so tasting their speed, scalability and stability, and ensuring they are up to the job and can perform well under varying workloads is important.
Secure Access Service Edge
The best way to ensure your network security is as good as it can be is to simplify your tools and create consistency by using Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). This is an architecture that delivers converged network and security as service capabilities including SD-WAN and cloud native security functions such as secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers, firewall as-a-service, and zero-trust network access. SASE delivers wide area network and security controls as a cloud computing service directly to the source of connection rather than at the data centre which will protect your network and users more effectively.
SD-WAN connectivity
If you haven’t already, extending your SD-WAN connectivity consistently across multiple clouds to automate cloud-agnostic connectivity and optimise the application experience is a must. It will enable your organisation to securely connect users, applications and data across multiple locations while providing improved performance, reliability and scalability. SD-WAN also simplifies the management of WANs by providing centralised control and visibility over the entire network.
As we head towards the new era of AI, cloud is the new data centre, Internet is the new network, and cloud offerings will dominate applications. By making sure your network is AI ready, by adopting a cloud-centric operating model, having a view of global Internet health and the performance of top SaaS applications, IT teams will be able to implement their company’s AI strategy successfully.

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