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10 Big Tech Trends That Will Influence Tomorrow's Workplace

Forbes Technology Council

With COVID-19 prompting office closures and a sudden shift to remote work, companies have had to adapt to and learn new tech on the fly in recent months, and change is still coming. Even if your organization has adjusted successfully, the “new normal” is an ever-moving target, especially when it comes to technology.

As top industry leaders, the members of Forbes Technology Council strive to identify upcoming tech trends and their potential impact before they arrive. Below, they predict the top 10 trends coming to the workplace and explain how your company can prepare for them.

1. On-Demand Workspaces

Once the pandemic subsides, a large portion of the workforce will continue to stay remote and visit physical offices as necessary. Corporations have to move to on-demand workspaces. Building systems have to get smarter to track capacity, employee temperature and manage inflow and outflow. This will be a boon for IoT, smart buildings and AI. - Brian Sathianathan, Iterate.ai

2. Online Security Awareness Training

The modern workplace now demands that the security perimeter be extended to wherever the employees are, including their homes. Working from home brings brand new challenges, and companies need to continuously train their staff on these risks. However, less face-to-face time at the office to attend security awareness training means that online-based e-learning is going to become more widely used. - Jason Lau, Crypto.com

3. Potential Virtual Private Network Attacks

Because most companies set up their network security to monitor for increases in volumetric and bandwidth patterns, not compromised internet protocol (IP) addresses, attacks utilizing virtual private networks (VPNs) are increasing. Companies can monitor for VPN attacks by keeping tabs on the IP addresses of their home employees and treating traffic from new IP addresses with caution. - Rodney Joffe, Neustar

4. Platforms And APIs To Facilitate Secure Remote Work

Recent cyberattacks, such as the one on Twitter, have proven that collaboration tools such as Slack can certainly be exploited. While such tools are more essential than ever to support the new norm of remote work, they need to be well administered by companies to avoid costly breaches. Online platforms and application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable firms to facilitate secure remote work will be in high demand. - Ahmad (Al) Fares, Celitech Inc.


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5. New-Age Learning Technologies

Digital learning is the need of the hour, and school systems will have to adapt to new-age learning technologies. Many parents will be uncomfortable sending their kids to school, and enabling these technologies for teachers, parents and students will be the next adaptation. - Bhavna Juneja, Infinity, a Stamford Technology Company

6. Work-From-Home Stipends And Training

A substantial portion of our newly minted remote workforce will remain remote. Numerous studies have shown that many workers want to stay fully or partially remote if they can. Businesses should embrace this by giving employees stipends and training for their work-from-home spaces. Equipping your team members with funds and knowledge to efficiently work remotely will pay off in dividends. - Marc Fischer, Dogtown Media LLC

7. Corporate VPNs And Single Sign-On Tools

Remote work will continue to dominate the workplace, but if you can’t provide a secure, corporate VPN to protect your intellectual property and corporate communications, there’s no point in continuing. Companies will need to invest in secure VPNs and single sign-on tools that make it easy for employees to work and hard for hackers to gain access. - Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster

8. Human Resources Systems

As hiring during the pandemic has become harder, it is easy to anticipate that the popularity of human resources (HR) systems is going to rise. The programs that will let HR representatives evaluate the capabilities of the candidate while working remotely will surely change the way we hire and onboard new people. And the sooner we adapt to the new solutions, the easier the emergence of this trend is going to be for us. - Daria Leshchenko, SupportYourApp Inc.

9. Stricter Security Policies

The security of remote work will come into play sooner rather than later. With the pandemic, and in a world where anything can happen, companies still need to be nimble and quick to act. The only way you can confidently do that is to have solid security policies in place that'll allow your team to be productive, no matter the global outlook and situation. - WaiJe Coler, InfoTracer

10. Residential Access To High-Speed Broadband

The need for secure, high-speed broadband access to residential areas is surging and will continue to do so as more of the workforce comes online to work remotely. Companies need to understand the needs of their remote work environments and fund communication, video and collaboration tools and technologies to keep productivity high. - Ravi Goyal, Sureline Systems

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