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Businesses need to have safeguards in place before embracing home-working

Businesses need to ensure that their computer systems have adequate security measures in place before embracing the potential benefits of flexible working arrangements.

According to a recently-published report from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), around 52 per cent of UK organisations now have a plan in place to ensure that they are able to keep operating in the event of a significant disruption.

Indeed, while 58 per cent of the managers questioned said that they feared that an electronic attack, such as one carried out by a hacker, could affect their operations, a majority have measures in place that will allow their employees to carry on working off-site.

However, before firms allow their employees to ditch their daily commute, experts have advised that they need to ensure that they have adequate computer protection in place.

Nigel Hawthorn, vice president of EMEA marketing at Blue Coat Systems, said: "Of course not every job can be done remotely, but knowledge workers usually can work remotely - companies need to ensure that they have the safeguards and network performance available to remote users; technologies such as desktop filtering and desktop WAN [Wide Area Network] optimisation can make employees just as effective outside the office as within."

This advice comes after thousands of London professionals opted to work from home during the latest round of strike action on the city's Underground transport system.

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