Google has unloaded a raft of new updates for Google Workspace that regear it towards hybrid working strategies. 

The updates include greater support for frontline workers, time management capabilities and tools for strengthening collaboration. 

“We’re excited to announce new innovations in Google Workspace that will further empower all the ways work happens – and deepen its impact – in an ever-changing world,” the VP and GM of Google Workspace, Javier Soltero, wrote in a blog post. 

For frontline workers, the update takes into account the use of personal devices, such as the use of smartphones and tablets by hospital workers or retail staff. Google Workspace Frontline comes with all the necessary apps – Gmail, Chat, Docs, Drive and so on – but it also includes business-level support and security features like advanced endpoint management to keep sensitive company data secure.

There are also features within Google Workspace to build custom apps directly from Google Sheets and Drive, so frontline workers can collect data in the field, report safety risks, manage customer requests and streamline their work.

This bleeds into other feature updates for managing schedules and workflows as they evolve in hybrid strategies. In the coming months, Google will be releasing new calendar-based features that will help users specify working ‘blocks’ – indications in the calendar that allow teammates to see when they’re online and available for meetings.

This includes ‘recurring out-of-office events’ which will automatically decline invites, and there will also be a setting to let co-workers know where a user will be during work hours, whether at home or in-office. 

For engagement and productivity, Google is also adding features to minimise distractions, which will include basic limitations on notifications and ‘Time Insights’ that will provide information to employees – but not managers – about project schedules and completion times. Google Assistant will also be available to provide calendar details and also be used to join meetings.

Meetings themselves will be getting some new features, including a ‘second screen’ function for Google Meet where users can host a meeting across a mix of devices – hosting on one and presenting data or documents with another. This will also include a split-screen update for the mobile version on Meet, Q&A features, pools and live captions in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and French. 

Remote working will play a “huge role” in post-pandemic life and is very much going to be the new normal, according to Citrix. 

The cloud giant said that UK employees want hybrid working models, despite a strong desire to meet in person again. The option to work remotely, it said, makes for “happier” workers that stay committed for longer. 

The comments came in response to remarks from prime minister Boris Johnson, who dismissed the notion that remote working will become the new normal for British businesses. Instead, he suggested that people will have the desire to get back into the workplace and resume in-person meetings. 

His statement echos similar comments the government made in the summer after the first lockdown ended, which saw it urge people to get back to the workplace. The aim was to increase footfall traffic for shops and restaurants in city centres and on popular commuter routes and came after the CBI warned that workers must return to the office or risk urban centres becoming ghost towns.

 “While the prime minister is undoubtedly right that many office workers may have a strong desire for face-to-face meetings once again, this does not mean remote working will not play a huge role in post-pandemic life,” Mark Sweeney, Citrix’s regional VP of UK and Ireland, told CloudPro.
 
Research conducted by Citrix found flexible working initiatives have improved both the professional and personal lives of many UK employees. Around 46% surveyed by Citrix said they would only accept a role that offered flexible work options if they were to change jobs, highlighting a clear desire for remote working to remain, rather than Johnson’s notion of a return to the old ways. 
 
“A key learning we should take from the past year is that work is not dictated by a particular place, and should companies use flexible technologies – such as cloud-based virtual desktops and apps – to offer employees a hybrid model of working, then they are likely to see happier and more engaged workers that stay committed for longer,” Sweeney added.

There is significant evidence to back Sweeney’s comments beyond Citrix’s research. Recent studies have shown that the majority of people that can work remotely wish to continue doing so in some capacity beyond lockdown, and there are reports highlighting how businesses are changing their office space with hybrid models in mind. 

Salesforce is perhaps the biggest promotor of remote and hybrid work. The tech giant recently announced the ‘death’ of the 9 to 5, with sweeping changes to its office space and work policies. Even Googleand Microsoft, which have both offered more negative comment on remote working, have accepted that hybrid office strategies need to be looked at. 

Even the CBI, which warned of ghost towns in the summer, has tweaked its stance; it released a report in November called ‘No Turning Back‘ that also suggested hybrid work was here to stay. 

Welcome to the 14th issue of IT Pro 20/20, our sister title’s digital magazine.

Now that we have a better idea about when the lockdown will finally end, many of us will naturally be thinking about our return to the office. It’s likely that, having grown accustomed to remote working, for most of us this return will be phased and, depending on your role, you may find yourself able to negotiate how often you make the commute in. Some will be desperate to get moving again, while others will have taken cues from the past year to take advantage of new-found flexibility.

However, before the conversation shifts towards life after lockdown, we’ve taken the opportunity to highlight areas of our industry that have played crucial, yet often overlooked roles in this great remote working experiment.

In this issue, we look at how data centres have coped with immense pressure from customers, the benefits and pitfalls of onboarding new staff remotely, how smart cities will underpin life post-pandemic, and much more.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on 31 March – previous issues can be found here. If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.

IBM has announced it’ll make its hybrid cloud available on any cloud, on-premises, or at the edge via its IBM Cloud Satellite.

Big Blue said it’s worked with Lumen Technologies to integrate its Cloud Satellite service with the Lumen edge platform to enable customers to use hybrid cloud services in edge computing environments. The firm also said it will collaborate with 65 ecosystem partners, including Cisco, Dell Technologies, and Intel, to build hybrid cloud services.

It said that IBM Cloud Satellite is now generally available to customers and can bring a secured, unifying layer of cloud services to clients across environments, regardless of where their data resides. IBM added that this technology would address critical data privacy and data sovereignty requirements. 

IBM said customers using the Lumen platform and IBM Cloud Satellite would be able to deploy data-intensive applications, such as video analytics, across highly distributed environments and take advantage of infrastructure designed for single-digit millisecond latency.

The collaboration will enable customers to deploy applications across more than 180,000 connected enterprise locations on the Lumen network to provide a low latency experience. They can also create cloud-enabled solutions at the edge that leverage application management and orchestration via IBM Cloud Satellite and build open, interoperable platforms that give customers greater deployment flexibility and more seamless access to cloud-native services like artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), and edge computing.

One example given of how this would benefit customers is using cameras to detect the last time surfaces were cleaned or flag potential worker safety concerns. Using an application hosted on Red Hat OpenShift via IBM Cloud Satellite from the proximity of a Lumen edge location, such cameras and sensors can function in near real-time to help improve quality and safety, IBM claimed.

IBM added that customers across geographies can better address data sovereignty by deploying this processing power closer to where the data is created.

“With the Lumen Platform’s broad reach, we are giving our enterprise customers access to IBM Cloud Satellite to help them drive innovation more rapidly at the edge,” said Paul Savill, SVP enterprise product management and services at Lumen. 

“Our enterprise customers can now extend IBM Cloud services across Lumen’s robust global network, enabling them to deploy data-heavy edge applications that demand high security and ultra-low latency. By bringing secure and open hybrid cloud capabilities to the edge, our customers can propel their businesses forward and take advantage of the emerging applications of the 4th Industrial Revolution.”

IBM is also extending its Watson Anywhere strategy with the availability of IBM Cloud Pak for Data as a Service with IBM Cloud Satellite. IBM said this would give customers a “flexible, secure way to run their AI and analytics workloads as services across any environment – without having to manage it themselves.”

Service partners also plan to offer migration and deployment services to help customers manage solutions as-a-service anywhere. IBM Cloud Satellite customers can also access certified software offerings on Red Hat Marketplace, which they can deploy to run on Red Hat OpenShift via IBM Cloud Satellite.

Two ransomware strains have retooled to exploit vulnerabilities in the VMware ESXi hypervisor system publicised last week and encrypt virtual machines (VMs).

The company patched three critical flaws across its virtualisation products last week. These included a heap buffer overflow bug in the ESXi bare-metal hypervisor, as well as a flaw that could have allowed hackers to execute commands on the underlying operating system that hosts the vCenter Server.

Researchers with CrowdStrike have since learned that two groups, known as ‘Carbon Spider’ and ‘Sprite Spider’, have updated their weapons to target the ESXi hypervisor specifically in the wake of these revelations. These groups have historically targeted Windows systems, as opposed to Linux installations, in large-scale ransomware campaigns also known as big game hunting (BGH).

The attacks have been successful, with affected victims including organisations that have used virtualisation to host many of their corporate systems on just a few ESXi servers. The nature of ESXi means these served as a “virtual jackpot” for hackers, as they were able to compromise a wide variety of enterprise systems with relatively little effort.

This follows news that cyber criminals last week were actively scanning for vulnerable businesses with unpatched VMware vCenter servers, only days after VMware issued fixes for the three flaws.

“By deploying ransomware on ESXi, Sprite Spider and Carbon Spider likely intend to impose greater harm on victims than could be achieved by their respective Windows ransomware families alone,” said CrowdStrike researchers Eric Loui and Sergei Frankoff. 

“Encrypting one ESXi server inflicts the same amount of damage as individually deploying ransomware on each VM hosted on a given server. Consequently, targeting ESXi hosts can also improve the speed of BGH operations.

“If these ransomware attacks on ESXi servers continue to be successful, it is likely that more adversaries will begin to target virtualization infrastructure in the medium term.”

Sprite Spider has conventionally launched low-volume BGH campaigns using the Defray777 strain, first attempting to compromise domain controllers before exfiltrating victim data and encrypting files. 

Carbon Spider, meanwhile, has traditionally targeted companies operating point-of-sale (POS) devices, with initial access granted through phishing campaigns. The group abruptly shifted its operational model in April last year, however, to instead undertake broad and opportunistic attacks against large numbers of victims. It launched its own strain, dubbed Darkside, in August 2020.

Both strains have compromised ESXI systems by harvesting credentials that can be used to authenticate to the vCenter web interface, which is a centralised server admin tool that can control multiple ESXi devices. 

After connecting to vCenter, Sprite Spider enables SSH to allow persistent access to ESXi devices, and in some cases changes the root password or the host’s SSH keys. Carbon Spider, meanwhile, accesses vCenter using legitimate credentials but also logged in over SSH using the Plink tool to drop its Darkside ransomware.