Back 
When the COVID-19 pandemic descended on the U.S., companies took a no-holds-barred approach to maintain their operations. Employees up and down organizational structures were told to work from home, and IT teams were tasked with making that happen. The timeline was short, and approval processes moved quickly, which meant changes to network access and security were made more quickly, and in some cases more haphazardly, than in a “normal” situation.
We did what we needed to do at that moment, each of us scrambling to support our company’s work-from-home needs. But now we’re out of crisis mode. CISOs need to take a deep breath, look around, and evaluate whether their networking and security infrastructures are optimized to support the business in the long run. It’s been a very challenging 18 months, but there’s also never been a better time to optimize.
First, get real
The first question the CISO should answer is what the next few years will look like. In their organization, will work-from-home and direct-to-internet processes be permanent changes to corporate workflows? Or are these just fads that will pass once COVID is fully in our rearview mirrors?
When we first moved into the pandemic environ