3 Advantages of a Remote Cyber Workforce

Before COVID-19 made working from home more the rule than the exception, “remote cyber talent” was not a term that you were likely to hear emerge from a cyber executive’s mouth.  

The pandemic has changed that. 

The new realities forced on us by the novel coronavirus have blown up many long-held beliefs. One of them is that cyber teams must be located onsite and/or co-located in order to work with maximum efficiency. At Booz Allen, in our work providing clients in business and government with a full range of cyber support, we’ve seen positive results from the shift toward remote work. As cyber leaders adapt and grow their cyber talent pools for the 21st century, we expect this trend toward more flexible work arrangements to continue, even after the pandemic is brought under control.

From what we’ve observed so far, here are three major advantages of freeing your organization’s cyber talent to work remotely.

1. Qualities Common to Most Great Cyber Teams Are Amplified by a Remote Work Environment

In our experience, going remote has actually amplified the traits that commonly set up a cyber team to excel. In our decades of work with cyber practices of all shapes and sizes, we’ve found that teams that share not only a competitive nature and passion for technology but also an informal, dynamic, multifunctional environment are successful at achieving and maintaining excellence. Here’s how we’ve observed the shift to remote work strengthening this performance environment:

• Multifunctionality – Remote settings remove the physical floors and walls that keep teams functionally siloed at the office. When instant messages replace serendipitous watercooler meetups as a primary means of informal worker-to-worker communication, a colleague on another team is suddenly just a click away. As artificial barriers break down, and skills and knowledge pass more easily between teams, narrow specialization becomes a thing of the past.  
• Dynamism – For a remote workforce, time that was once spent commuting can be reallocated toward the continuous learning necessary to keep up with an ever-evolving cyber threat. In the past 6 months, Booz Allen has already seen a near 300% increase in self-directed, online learning in its own technology population. 
• Informal – Elite cyber professionals already tend to thrive in less traditional office environments. They do even better with the flexible schedules and loosened formality that naturally arise from remote work arrangements. These settings support a positive mindset for changing direction when new priorities arise with rising risks. 

2. Recruiting Remote Cyber Talent Expands and Diversifies Your Labor Market

Cyber’s hyper-competitive labor market must be expanded in order to successfully bring even close to the amount of new talent necessary to keep up with demand. More flexible remote work policies can open additional opportunities to recruit from more diverse talent pools. They can also remove obstacles that may otherwise prevent some potential candidates from thriving. To optimize this shift, cyber leaders must work with hiring managers and human capital teams to: 

• Update job criteria and descriptions – Job descriptions are often the first line of offense to gain qualified talent. Just as often they're also the first line of defense to screen people out of the process. If it was previously your organization’s policy to include “ability to work onsite” as a requirement in all cyber job listings, make sure and communicate that this is no longer the case. 
• Shift interviewing tactics – Ensure hiring managers are trained on proper virtual interviewing techniques and “candidate care.” The interview process should be mutually beneficial, allowing candidates to get to know the organization, position, and team. With 0% unemployment and up to four job offers weekly, a positive candidate experience is vital.
• Enhance the onboarding experience – Adapt and optimize onboarding processes for a virtual setting, as well as to support the unique needs of cyber talent. 
• Foster inclusion, not just diversity – By now most leaders should be receptive to the case for diversity, but once people have joined an organization inclusion remains a core challenge. Inclusion training can be useful, but this alone doesn’t always yield the desired results. Mindset and management practices are critical.

3. Embracing Remote Cyber Teams Can Decrease Overhead and Control Rising Staff Costs

Now that 2020 has proven that it’s possible to have portions of the cyber workforce operate effectively in a remote setting, a permanent shift toward remote work seems inevitable. Cyber leaders slow to this change should expect to face greater transactional costs and long-term battles in hiring and retaining cyber talent. To optimize immediate cost-saving opportunities and maximize workforce productivity consider the following steps: 

• Adjust your staffing strategy – Cyber leaders must re-evaluate whether employees absolutely need to be onsite, but they shouldn’t stop there. Leaders should also look at how staffing strategies could expand opportunities to equip existing talent with new capabilities or consider bringing on short-term contract talent for certain surge roles. For example, when it comes to in-demand roles that also have unpredictable surges in demand (e.g., incident response), it may be more effective to consider outsourcing through off-site contract work. 
• Determine who must stay onsite – Avoid unintended risks of offsite cyber team members by first determining which roles are truly required to be on site. Once that determination has been made, map out the employee experience to identify factors that may imperil the ability to support cyber functions. 
• Mind the gap, the pay gap – Activating a remote cyber workforce does risk widening the pay disparity between those working in high-demand labor markets versus those with lower competition. It's critical to work with human capital teams to develop pay and promotion practices that empower the cyber remote talent pool with equal opportunities for fair pay and career advancement. This is especially the case if cyber leaders want to retain this new talent pool for the long haul. 
• Mitigate against increased attack surface risks through differentiated rewards – Freeing your cyber workforce to go remote will increase your attack surface for the very professionals who are intended to combat cyber attacks. This may seem counterintuitive, but cyber leaders should view this as an opportunity to make the struggle for enterprise-wide cyber awareness a cybersecurity team rallying cry. 

Conclusion

As the shift to more remote cyber teams inevitably takes effect, it will bring clear benefits to both cyber staff and organizations. Will your organization delay the shift and incur the costs in 2 to 3 years? Or will you step ahead of the curve and mitigate against the long-term financial and talent costs? It’s time to pause and reconsider some of the long-held assumptions around conducting cyber work remotely. 

For more information regarding your cyber talent strategy, contact us.