Risk Management Portfolio for Secure Telework

Abstract

In Japan, telework is attracting renewed attention due to the government-led “work style reform”. The advent of COVID-19 in 2020 has led to the rapid spread of teleworking, and its current state of widespread adoption may be attributed to transient factors as a counter to the spread of COVID-19. A current problem is that dealing with the emergence of risks has been postponed or overlooked because telework was hastily promoted and introduced even though sufficient preparations had not been made. In this work, we conducted a risk assessment from the viewpoints of both companies and employees, identified 28 risk factors, and proposed countermeasures for these factors in order to make teleworking permanently safe and secure in the new normal era. We also proposed the establishment of various systems related to the telework environment and the effective use of cloud computing as measures for both companies and employees. The results of an evaluation of these risk countermeasure proposals using risk values showed that they could reduce risk by approximately 61%. Finally, we constructed a portfolio to identify priorities for the proposed risk measures in terms of practical applicability and to identify the appropriate stepwise introduction of them. The results should contribute to the safe and secure utilization of telework in the new normal era.