Year: 2020

La Maison Royale, Nairobi, is a 4-star superior boutique business hotel with a ‘French taste,’ state-of-the-art facility and close to the entertainment in the Westland neighborhood, La Maison Royale is a unique experience. La Maison Royale prides itself with the friendly staff and the practical touches that make being away from home easier, whether a person books their rooms by day, week or longer. Travelling for business, looking for temporary or corporate housing, needing short-term housing during relocation, or planning a weekend getaway, La Maison Royale has a solution that will fit everyone’s budget. Challenges La Maison Royale has their prominent presence across several locations in Nairobi. Considering this, they required seamless connectivity within sites. A system for call accounting, budgeting and routing with hospitality features was their primary requirement. Furthermore, a comprehensive and scalable solution that does not need a transformation in the coming years was their main challenge. The hotel infrastructure required a centralized communication management of all business communication. Besides, they were looking for a multi-site connectivity with call accounting and call budgeting.     Solution Matrix addressed these challenges by proposing SARVAM UCS, which is a unified communication server for modern enterprises that manages all business communications from one place. SARVAM UCS is an enterprise-grade unified communications solution that offers La Maison Royale the much needed collaboration, communication, messaging and mobility between multi-locational sites. Unifying all the communication networks and devices provides users with the flexibility of accessing the calls, messaging and voice mails from any of the devices irrespective of their location. Results Unified Communication for workforce collaboration and better customer responsiveness: Call management and the ability to connect from anywhere, anytime and with anyone. Simple administration and management due to webbased configuration.  Enhanced customer responsiveness to customer/ clients.  Scalability to expand their business footprints in the future.  Leverages existing infrastructure and connect on a common communication platform.  IP-solution at core and application upgradation paths that renews and extends investment.  

  Maharashtra’s pioneering educational institution, Sanjivani Group of Institutes, has ensured the health and safety of all the stakeholders through Prama Hikvision’s advanced temperature screening solutions. It is one of the finest examples of back to the business applications being successfully implemented in the education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. With Empowering thousands of young students through education in the rural Maharashtra as the mission, Sanjivani Group of Institutes situated at Kopargaon, Ahmednagar, is a premier institute for MBA, Engineering, Pharmacy, Nursing and Diploma studies. The Sanjivani Rural Education Society (SRES), was established by Hon’ble Shankarrao Genuji Kolhe in 1983, at Kopargaon, rural domain in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, India. As the educational scenario changed and evolved with time, the management understood the need and added a number of courses under the umbrella of the Sanjivani Rural Education Society (SRES), which subsequently established the Sanjivani College of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Sanjivani Senior College, Sanjivani Junior College, Sanjivani Group of Schools including Sanjivani International school, Shirdi and Sanjivani International school, Navi Mumbai. Health and Safety challenges When the pandemic crisis occurred, there were a lot of discussions and deliberations among the Sanjivani Group’s management. They were getting prepared for it, by analysing all the challenges faced during the lockdown and specific criteria for the situation. “We are sure the educational institutes in the post lockdown scenario will be facing a whole new set of health, safety and security challenges related to temperature screening, social distancing and crowd flow control. These challenges are relatively new challenges compared to the traditional education security challenges. We decided to take these challenges head on, to match up to the expectations of all our stakeholders,” said Amit N Kolhe, Managing Trustee, Sanjivani Rural Education Society (SRES). Technology innovations The management was looking for a temperature screening solution that can be used for teaching faculty, staff, students and visitors to comply with the health and safety guidelines. The request for the proof of concept was floated in the market. It was a pleasant surprise, the OEM and SI partner were ready within a shortest possible time. They offered a robust solution, the effectiveness of the temperature screening solution for operational safety was unmatched. The AI detection function ensured that there were no recurring false alarms. Temperature screening installations Many advanced artificial intelligence (AI) enabled temperature screening solutions were installed in Sanjivani Group of institutes to comply with health and safety guidelines. The seamless integration of these solutions was done to ensure students, faculty and staff should be safe in the ongoing pandemic situation. Win-win experience The Sanjivani Group of Institute’s association with Prama Hikvision has evolved over the time. It was a win-win experience for both the sides. Advantages   The management did extensive study and research, they found out what are the critical requirements. The Sanjivani Group of institutes’ campus on a regular day had 8000 students present, it was a gigantic challenge for the management. The temperature screening solutions provided by Prama Hikvision really helped to do the temperature screening of the visitors. It also helped in bifurcating and identifying the unauthorized visitors coming to the campus.     Being on the management side, it was important for us to make sure that best of the best technologies was given to students and stakeholders. We have given maximum focus on safety and security of the education ecosystem. We think it worked very well for us. We are really thankful to Prama Hikvision for providing all the solutions and lots of value added services. Installing security system is one aspect, but service is another, which is really an important factor. Prama Hikvision supported us by giving the excellent service “We have ensured that proper training is given to our security personnel and staff to handle the security systems, solutions and IT solutions back end. The temperature screening solutions worked very well for our requirements. Earlier we had to screen the students and staff one by one, which was quite cumbersome. Now with the latest AI enabled temperature screening solution we are able to screen a large number of students and staff at a much faster rate. It has really helped us a lot,” said Amit N Kolhe. “Temperature screening solutions project for Sanjivani Group of Institutes, Kopargaon was a great learning experience. We value Prama Hikvision’s experience and expertise in providing the latest and innovative security solutions. They work very well with vendor partners to deliver solutions that suit the requirements. Their professionalism and quality services are always appreciated. We find their objective advice very valuable, while designing security solutions and selecting equipment to install,” said Hemant Rokade – Director Sales, OM Agency, Prama Hikvision’s System Integration Partner.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organizations to adapt to a new reality where much of the staff have to work from home. This poses significant challenges because the existing VPNs the companies had in place were not designed to handle a sudden explosion of remote workers. With infrastructure becoming expensive it’s a good opportunity to have remote access with zero trust architecture to provide a safe and secure remote working environment for employees. Many organizations that had been reluctant in moving towards remote access were found to be completely unprepared to tackle the sudden lockdown, which negatively impacted their businesses. To overcome situations like these, different business units, project groups, partners, contractors and guests require secure and different levels of remote access and often require a user experience tailored to employees unique requirements and devices. Mobile devices and bring your own device (BYOD) present additional challenges in providing on-demand connections in a manner that keeps data secure in the corporate network and limits exposure. But with just remote access there also comes the vulnerability of an opportune moment for the hackers to execute cyber-attacks and gain access to sensitive data of commercial value.   The increasing global spike in the number of phishing emails from last few months is not new to anyone. These have been indicating a serious and targeted attempt to exploit the anxiety related to the pandemic. Remote access in combination with zero trust is the perfect solution to counter such threats. With Array’s Network ADC, SSL VPN and WAF solutions, organizations will be at an advantage. This combined with zero trust – a security concept centered on the belief that organizations should not automatically trust anything inside or outside its perimeters and instead must verify anything and everything trying to connect before granting access gives organizations an edge like never before Array’s secure remote access solutions provide greater levels of security, a greater range of access methods, a broader range of device support and the ability to provide differentiated, identity-based access tailored to the needs of multiple communities of interest. Besides, with Array’s secure mobile access solution, sensitive data remains protected on the enterprise network and is accessible anytime, anywhere, so BYOD becomes an advantage rather than a threat to security. Mitigating risks associated with business continuity events and realizing gains through higher employee productivity are driving increased demand for remote access. While traditional VPNs are well suited for giving remote access to employees they are not as adept at supporting office workers. Remote access can be cost-effectively scaled for as many workers as needed even from a single appliance. It’s not just employees, even third-party vendors who work remotely have the advantage of being under the protection of Array’s remote access solutions. What’s more, because data never leaves the network, security is assured. The Covid-19 situation has led to a significant rise in phishing attacks and social engineering scams. Threat actors are using Covid-19 themes to trick users into clicking on malicious links that spread ransomware, harvest credentials and so on, and to fight these threats organizations need rigid security measures. They need to keep in mind that a zero trust framework cannot be implemented without a secure tool for remote access. Zero trust has many benefits when combined with remote access. It can help organizations cut back on complexity, reduce its attack surface, and increase visibility for auditing and compliance. There are a few best practices when configuring remote access within a zero trust framework like strict authentication rules, restrict authorization and auditing. The zero trust architecture is similar to one-toone segmentation and helps in preventing DDoS attack, server scanning, application exploits, man-in-the-middle attacks and SQL injection. It is all the more important now to have a network security model that verifies the user for the organization at every step of the way and all the time. With the combination of remote access and zero trust, organizations find an answer to the security concerns during the pandemic times.  

A thought leader and an action catalyzer rolled into one – Anil Puri is a rare combination of a visionary, and one who has mastered the art of strategic and tactical thinking to the core. He has been using this combination to seed new ideas and to lead them to their implementation onground. This has been a consistent feature of his career. He has been keenly watching the wide spread disruption caused by COVID 19 across the board in all contours of the industry. The spontaneous and immediate impact was on the organizations, HR & employees. Corporate governance is a mechanism which has key roles for board of directors and the management. The functional relationship between them is a bond tied with the thin wire of corporate culture, mutual understanding and regulatory guidelines. COVID 19 has transformed this space to usher in more transparency and obliterate the opaque side of the management. In this series of five articles so far, he has attempted to discuss the impact of COVID 19 over organizations with reference to roles of HR, people, processes, technology and corporate governance, and will be closing the series.   INTRODUCTION COVID-19 has created unique and very profound challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, with organizations facing high-stakes, high speed decision making, the need for good governance and risk management practices has never been felt greater. Just as boards and senior executives settled into new, enhanced governance processes, their operating environments have abruptly changed with COVID-19. The COVID-19 catastrophe has not only posed an unprecedented governance challenge, it has also ushered in a period of great experimentation, a time for boards both to question old habits and imagine new possibilities – from creative approaches to maintaining effective communication in virtual boardrooms to establish new ties with external peers, from diving into operational minutiae to preparing for long-term survival, and from managing financial details to ensuring that the employees are healthy and safe. The global perspective In light of the fast changing environment, globally across the spectrum of industries and sectors, it is emerging that the management and boards of directors should continually review their practices to ensure that they are right and relevant for the current environment, and that they are not sowing the seeds of future conduct issues. Elements of good governance and risk management practices are critical for organizations to undertake in order to flourish post COVID-19. Organizations that get this right will flourish post COVID-19, while poor governance could prove to be fatal. The paradigm shift The key highlights of the paradigm shift happening globally can best be summarized as under:- Boards are going virtual and managing the challenges of remote work.  The board chair is in the spotlight.  The lines between the board and management have blurred. Boards are taking the long view & putting people first. Sharing learning’s in real-time A crisis-ready board has a plan and the right people in place. Liquidity and capitalization considerations are being taken care of pro-actively Executive compensation matters are a concern. Take over defenses and preparedness are prominently figuring in the minds of the directors and managements. What constitutes the good governance and risk management practices? Both the private and public sectors are re-defining what constitutes good practice. Navigating the COVID-19 crisis requires careful consideration of a range of issues underlined in the opening sentence under these unprecedented circumstances. This article outlines several corporate governance issues for the board of directors which is charged with overseeing the short-term and long-term health of the corporation and its business prospects to consider as their companies respond to the challenges and risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The balancing act for boards has suddenly become more complex as there are many significant short term impacts arising from the longer-term objectives being pursued by the board of directors and the managements. Some of the constituents of the good governance and risk management practices are listed below:- Maintain appropriate board and sub-committee oversight.  Maintain an appropriate risk appetite, risk framework and metrics. Ensure risk information is of high quality and flows freely.  Adopt an approach to regular, in the moment, self-assessments and review. Communicate clearly on purpose, values and culture. Active steps for Corporate Governance In light of director oversight responsibilities and as a matter of good corporate governance, some specific active steps for boards to consider in response to COVID-19 include the following: Enhancing the company’s existing reporting and information systems that are used by the board to provide oversight. Such a system would help ensure that the board is able to receive relevant information in a timely manner to monitor COVID-19 issues and their potential risks to and effects on the company. Once a system is implemented, a board should be active in its monitoring of significant issues so that it stays informed of material business risks and red flags resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Forming a committee. A possible tool available to a board to address its monitoring and oversight responsibilities is to create a committee that could be tasked with evaluating and, if necessary, adopting any available preventative and ameliorative measures regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the company’s operations and affairs. Timely and sufficiently detailed minutes and resolutions should document the proceedings of the committee and provide evidence of the activities conducted, matters considered and decisions made by the committee. If, after due consideration, the committee declines to adopt any measure considered, clear, contemporaneous committee records would then be used to support a showing of good faith in the committee’s efforts to evaluate such measure. Enhancing communications with company management. A board should consider increased and sustained open dialogue with company management on both the business risks and the workplace health and safety issues posed by COVID-19. Boards and management should review legal and regulatory developments regarding COVID-19 at both the federal and state levels, review the company’s risk-mitigation policies and protocols and adjust such protocols as necessary to conform to developing regulatory circumstances (especially if a…