This survey was conducted to determine the impact of COVID-19 on technology deployments of businesses in Canada as work from home, combined with an economic downturn, swept the world starting in March 2020. One hundred senior Canadian IT executives were surveyed. Their titles range from Director of IT Operations to CIO and CISO. The companies represent a broad swath of industry and include retail, manufacturing, financial services, and hospital services. The average revenue of the companies surveyed was $408 million and ranged from $49 million to $1 billion.
During the months of March and April 2020, most of the world went on lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of a new pathogen. Many organizations had no warning at all and were forced to take extraordinary measures to provide business continuity while their offices and retail operations were temporarily shuttered. Yet most organizations demonstrated resiliency and a surprisingly fast response. By mid-summer most had adapted to a new normal. Employees could work effectively from home. Technology played an important role in this rapid transformation. Responses to this survey, conducted in October 2020 indicates that network architectures and security have evolved to meet the challenge of a work from home world. Most respondents plan to continue to support work from home for the foreseeable future. The majority of respondents, 75%, expect over half of the workforce to continue to work remotely.
Richard Stiennon is a founding member of The Analyst Syndicate and Chief Research Analyst for IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 3,000+ vendors that make up the IT security industry. He has presented on the topic of cybersecurity in 31 countries on six continents. He was a lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is the author of Surviving Cyberwar (Government Institutes, 2010) and Washington Post Best Seller, There Will Be Cyberwar. He writes for Forbes and The Analyst Syndicate. He is a member of the advisory board at the Information Governance Initiative. Stiennon was Chief Strategy Officer for Blancco Technology Group, the Chief Marketing Officer for Fortinet, Inc. and
VP Threat Research at Webroot Software. Prior to that he was VP Research at Gartner, Inc. He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and his MA in War in the Modern World from King’s College, London. His latest book Security Yearbook 2020 is available on Amazon.
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