Cloud Access Security Broker Solves Remote Working Challenges in Developing Economies

Remote working has become increasingly popular in recent years. Data from the United States shows that 4.1 million people remotely full-time.

Developing economies have been slower to embrace the benefits of remote working. However, many of them have started to become increasingly reliant on it as well. Some emerging economies have used Internet technology to increase their GNP considerably.

Large companies in the US and Europe outsource a lot of work to remote employees in some emerging economies. Some countries like the Philippines have specialized in providing services remotely, which is helping spur economic growth.

However, these countries face some growing challenges with their Internet infrastructure. They need to use tools like cloud access security broker to address them. 

Which Countries Have Benefited the Most from Remote Working?

Emerging markets that are benefiting from remote working tend to be clustered in eastern Asia. However, they are propping up all over the world. Latin American countries haven’t been as successful at implementing teleworking as countries like Indonesia, India, Singapore and the Philippines. However, a growing number of Latin American economies have found remote working to be a highly effective way to boost productivity and efficiency.

Countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Ecuador, have set the pace in Latin America, which is one of the regions where telework has experienced considerable growth in recent years. Although these countries aren’t using remote working as much as many parts of East Asia, they are rapidly embracing it. Mexico is in second place worldwide with a 30% increase in remote working opportunities. This shows, according to multiple studies, that there has been a major increase in productivity. They offer many services, such as designing new website logos. This increase is up to 84% in those companies where this flexible working model is already used as a daily practice.

In some countries, this work scheme has already been incorporated into their legislation, as is the case of Colombia. In 2008, the Ministry of Labor began to mention teleworking or working from home, supporting this modality under Law 1221, including some objectives such as the generation of more jobs in the country and the inclusion of people with physical disabilities and those who are deprived of their freedom in the labor market.

This law was also proposed to improve the mobility of cities to make them increasingly sustainable, reduce the daily displacement of thousands of workers and therefore minimize environmental pollution. According to this law, workers under this modality have the same labor guarantees as all other employees.

Worldwide, surveys have been carried out covering up to sixteen thousand collaborators or senior workers, who work for companies where teleworking is used. The result has been that eighty-four percent (84%) of them consider that this work scheme to have a direct connection between this increase in productivity, the level of income and teleworking. Other studies carried out in 2010 have determined that productivity climbed an average of sixty percent (60%) with projections to the progressive increase.

Remote technology is opening several new doors for growing economies that are entering their prime. However, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed some vulnerabilities in their models. These issues will need to be addressed if they intend to be more dependent on remote working.

Internet resilience must be a priority in emerging markets, which cloud access security broker can address

Harvard Business School recently talked about the global state of remote working during the COVID-19 crisis. A record number of companies have started implementing remote working to conform with social distancing guidelines.

“All of these, in turn, are dependent on internet infrastructure and how able it is to keep up with the spikes in digital traffic, especially with the simultaneous use of high-bandwidth applications. To reduce the costs a country must incur by putting the face-to-face economy on pause, policymakers and technology companies must understand where services are falling short and best practices and benchmarks to make near-term improvements and plan investments for the longer-term, beyond the immediate crisis,” the authors write.

The challenge is making sure that each nation’s Internet infrastructure is capable of handling the increased load. Some countries that have specialized in outsourcing online services have a low resilience for their Internet infrastructure to handle increased traffic surges. These countries include Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and India. India has the lowest Internet infrastructural resilience, despite being one of the countries that rely most heavily on the Internet for economic growth.

The pandemic is likely to expose some of these challenges for many countries moving forward. They are going to need to identify weaknesses in their Internet infrastructure and rectify them to ensure they can deliver reliable remote working opportunities.

There are a number of ways that they can improve it. One option is to focus on using cloud access security broker. 

TechTarget has a description on these services:

“CASBs work by ensuring that network traffic between on-premises devices and the cloud provider complies with the organization’s security policies. The value of cloud access security brokers stems from their ability to give insight into cloud application use across cloud platforms and identity unsanctioned use. This is especially important in regulated industries.”

Companies that use remote working should be aware of these benefits. They can use it to improve their internet resilience by improving their security. This will solve many of their challenges, which will make it easier to deliver remote working services reliably.