Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "Companies Are Demanding Employees Return To The Office - Is Remote Work Dead?" video.
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I actually understand a bit the position of finance... I am an accountant. I handle huge amounts of money on a daily basis. Money, that is not mine and that I am responsible for, if something bad happens. Now I have a bit of interest in computer networking and can tell you. Home networks are not safe. There's a whole lot of poorly configured devices on these networks as well as IoT devices with poor security and the networks are not partitioned, meaning any one of these could be used to attack the work issued laptop. If I were in CFO position, that would be a major argument for me, to want to not have my people work at home. Not that I don't trust them, I don't trust their network at home. To illustrate, I interviewed some time ago with a company, that was hacked a few years earlier. In spite of IT working around the clock, their accounting system was still not fully recovered from the attack and they had to do workarounds.
The problem here from IT standpoint is, that if you're in remote-first environment, there's a much wider angle of attack on your infrastructure, meaning you're under greater threat. This is what the CEO or CFO will hear from the CIO, hence the resistance to work from home in these high-stakes positions. Work at home can work for some fields, but not in all. IT and anything having to do with PCs is a good example. Why? Because the people working there are aware of this and act accordingly at least most of the time, hence lower threat and they can work from home safely. A call center operator? There are ways to add layers of security to what he/she is doing (and I'm not talking just about VPN) and there is no direct way, these people could handle the company money, hence same risk, but less danger and thus they can work at home, making ti possible for these people to work from home. But finance? These people handle the money directly in at least some positions. in smaller firms maybe even in most if not all positions. These people are not computer savvy to the point of securing their network (because it's a completely different field from what they use computers for), hence massive danger of losing money due to a hack.
Now what is the answer here? Well, there are four.
1. There's the hybrid model, where employees have two works stations, one being a laptop at home, one being a computer in the office, where the laptop is hard locked from the more sensitive agenda. Meaning that the accountant, for instance, can input invoices in to the system from home, but pay them in the office.
2. There's department structuring, where tasks, which can be safely done remotely are given to some employees to work from home and then there are few people, who have to come to the office, handling the more sensitive stuff. Again an accounting example. There are AP, AR specialists, who work from home, inputting/issuing invoices, and then there are treasurers, who are in the office and pay them.
3. buying the employees the equipment and training them, to use it properly. I have bought myself a router and switches, which can do VLANs and I have a specific network, firewalled completely from my core/home and IoT networks, so that I can work from home safely. Anyone, who's willing to put about four hours in to some learning can do that.
4. Combination of the above.
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