• Bridges to Prosperity helps build trail bridges in rural communities.
• The nonprofit is using AI to map these areas and identify prospective bridge locations.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

Not all maps are created equal. Huge swaths of land lack basic geographical data, including details as vital as the locations of rivers or roads.

To Bridges to Prosperity, a nongovernmental organization that helps build bridges in isolated rural communities, this data gap meant missing infrastructure.

Since its launch in 2001, the NGO has built or supported the construction of over 600 trail bridges in 21 countries, creating safe, accessible routes to medical clinics, schools, and markets. But building bridges is expensive, so in 2020, it pivoted from independently building bridges to partnering with governments to support their infrastructure efforts. Still, figuring out where bridges were needed was difficult.

Many rural waterways, especially the smaller streams and rivers that isolate entire villages during the rainy season, had not yet been mapped by governments or businesses. After analyzing 5,000 waterways around the world, the organization found that 38% of streams and rivers weren't on any existing maps.

"The rivers that are preventing them from getting to school, getting to markets, getting to clinics, to churches, to visit friends, that literally stops them from doing all those things, is not even a blue line on that map," Nivi Sharma, Bridges to Prosperity's CEO, told Business Insider.

"There is huge data inequity on how much we spend, how much investment we do in mapping certain populations, and how little we do for others," she added.

Bridges to Prosperity turned to artificial intelligence to fill the data gap. First, it built Fika Map, an AI tool that identifies locations where bridges could be built and estimates construction costs, among other capabilities. "Fika" means "to arrive" in Swahili.

The NGO also teamed up with Better Planet Laboratory to create WaterNet, an AI model that maps the world's waterways. They used satellite data to detect elevation and vegetation patterns, which the AI model then analyzed to approximate the location of waterways.

Bridges to Prosperity is using these programs with governments in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Zambia to help plan bridge construction and improve infrastructure across the countries.

Layering the data

Bridges to Prosperity had already been producing maps for areas where it had built bridges. This gave the NGO a starting database of geographical data that it could use and add to in order to build these programs.

"It's really easy to map where communities live by looking at satellite data, and most governments have schools, health clinics, markets, and critical destinations already mapped," Sharma said. "And so we started layering all this information together."

It also used data from less conventional sources, like the fitness tracking app Strava, to calculate travel times over uneven terrain.

But it still struggled to identify smaller rivers and streams.

"High-resolution satellite images are needed for the mapping of waterways in remote areas," said Marouane Temimi, an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Temimi said there are two types of satellite data. For optical satellite data, cameras capture images of the Earth's surface. Clouds can disrupt this, blocking out target areas. Radar satellite imagery, on the other hand, uses radio waves, which means it can create images even when clouds are in the way. But it can be affected by wind.

The two types of data can be combined to build accurate maps — but they come with a cost. Temimi said that satellite data is usually collected by commercial sensors, so getting the information can be expensive.

Sharma said the NGO had to balance getting quality data with making sure both programs were affordable, scalable, and global.

"The whole argument around AI and its inclusiveness — it's not built with enough good training data," Sharma said. "It often overlooks the entire Global South, which is obviously what we're trying not to do. But that's the expensive part."

A tool for change

Bridges to Prosperity and Better Planet Laboratory measured the impact of the dataset by assessing the number of waterways identified. Previously, they estimated that there were 54 million kilometers of mapped waterways around the globe. The WaterNet database mapped another 124 million kilometers, or 77 million miles, which more than tripled the number of known waterways worldwide.

Sharma said that Fika Map and WaterNet could help governments complete surveying work for bridge construction in months, rather than years.

"It's a decision-making tool. It's an advocacy tool. It's a planning tool," she said. "It really tells the full story of rural livelihoods and what needs to be done to improve that development."

• More than 2,500 ships pass through the Freeport of Riga every year.
• The port is rolling out a private 5G network to power technology like autonomous sea drones.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

In the Middle Ages, seafarers would sail down the Daugava River to take refuge from the harsh winds and waves of the Baltic Sea. They'd anchor their ships, which carried goods like corn, hide, and flax, in a small natural harbor in the city of Riga.

Today, the harbor in the Latvian capital is still a bustling port, although cargo ships and autonomous drones have replaced the sails and oars. It was designated a freeport, or free trade zone, in 2001, which means that businesses using the port may be exempt from certain taxes and tariffs. More than 2,500 ships passed through the harbor in 2024.

Ansis Zeltins, the CEO of the Freeport of Riga Authority and the chairman of the European Sea Ports Organization, said automation is one of the biggest areas of innovation in the shipping industry. For instance, uncrewed surface vehicles, sometimes known as sea drones, can perform routine tasks like ship inspections and monitor water pollution levels.

But remote and autonomous technology requires a fast, reliable connection.

"The amount of data that needs to be processed in today's ports is immense and continuously growing," Zetlins said. "Modern logistics, as well as port and maritime security solutions, require the secure exchange of data between all stakeholders in real time."

But that's not easy when connecting ships, drones, and the port across the ocean.

"Ships are moving objects," Zeltins said. "That means, technologically, there's a challenge with the signal."

The port used to rely on WiFi and 4G to connect ships and drones to the mainland, but in 2020, it teamed up with LMT, a Latvian telecoms company, to roll out 5G connections across the port.

More devices, faster speeds

5G is a wireless technology that uses radio waves to transmit data.

"For the majority of people like you and me, 5G is not that big of an upgrade from 4G or WiFi," Chris Karaplis, the CEO of Simply Embedded, a technology consulting firm, told Business Insider. "While speeds can be slightly faster, the biggest differentiator is its ability to support more devices, so your connection won't slow down when more people are on the network."

5G can support as many as 2.6 million devices per square mile.

"For industrial applications in sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, and smart cities, 5G can be a game changer," Karaplis said. "Being able to send large packets of data more reliably and faster, ultimately improving efficiencies, is a huge benefit for infrastructure or logistics-critical businesses."

At the start of the 5G rollout, LMT and Freeport of Riga built a private 5G network within the Baltic Container Terminal on the mainland. They replaced 22 WiFi access points with just one central control system and two outdoor antennas.

Under the new 5G system, Vilciņš said data transmission speeds became more than 10 times faster. This resulted in the use of other technology in port operations, such as replacing handheld radio communications with push-to-talk, a solution that allows the transmission of images and videos as well as sound.

"There were immediate improvements in business processes," Kārlis Vilciņš, the head of system integration business at LMT, told BI in an email. Vilciņš said before the switch, container reach stackers, or vehicles used to transport containers within the port, idled and waited for a stable connection to handle containers, which often caused delays.

'Multi-hop' connections

The real challenge was connecting the ships in transit. They used a "multi-hop" method, where ships serve as floating telecom base stations. One vessel connects to the mainland's 5G antenna, then passes that connection to the next ship, and so on.

LVR Flote, a port services provider based in Riga, first successfully tested the method in November 2023 using LĪVA, the first 5G-equipped ship on the Baltic Sea. This past July, the company carried out a more complex test, connecting two ships with an airborne drone that transmitted real-time seabed surveys and video footage back to the port. These hydrographic measurements are critical for safe navigation and port operations.

"5G provides an option for real-time controls," Zeltins said. "It's much safer and more responsive."

Ships using the multi-hop technique can connect up to 18 miles apart. Up to five ships can be linked up in this way, extending the total network range at sea to more than 100 miles.

"This is a major improvement because such technology has not been deployed at sea before," Arturs Lindenbergs, the head of the innovation development division at LMT, said in an email.

Looking ahead, Zeltins wants to harness the faster connection to bring new technology to the Freeport of Riga. For instance, the port is testing a Remote Operations Center platform for autonomous maritime systems.

"Our collaborative efforts have the potential to make the port of Riga a unique test bed for next-generation maritime technologies, increase high-value-added activity at the port, and attract high-value investments and new revenue streams," he said.

• Zurich Insurance Group has over 55 million customers around the world.
• The insurer built an AI tool into its agents' workflow to increase customer loyalty.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

For insurance agents, quick access to policy data is essential to helping customers faster.

With more than 55 million customers around the world, Zurich Insurance Group relies on strong customer relationships to stay competitive.

"Interaction is by far the biggest driver of loyalty with our customers," Aleksandar Vidović, the CEO of Zurich's AI and analytics company, ZCAM, told Business Insider.

Zurich has a network of thousands of agents worldwide who work directly with customers. Their main job is selling insurance policies, but the role also involves explaining complicated policy details.

They communicate across various channels, including phone calls, emails, and WhatsApp messages. The agents told Vidović's team that juggling these channels, as well as ploughing through dense policy documents, could make it difficult to keep track of the details needed to give each customer a tailored experience.

For instance, Vidović said that the agents spent a lot of time trying to determine whether customers were covered for a specific incident.

"You can imagine going through 10 or 15 pages of insurance jargon. It can take a lot of time," he said.

Previously, data on customers and company policies was scattered across systems or, in some cases, not provided to the agents at all. In January 2024, Vidović's team set about creating a customer relationship management system that could connect the dispersed datasets to help the agents give every customer what they needed.

Simplifying customer support

One of the team's guiding design principles was the "three-click rule": No agent should need more than three clicks to get what they need. Whether it was pulling up a customer's policy details or sending a follow-up message, everything had to be fast and intuitive.

Zurich, which serves customers in more than 215 countries and territories, is familiar with rolling out new technology; it has implemented more than 160 AI-powered tools across its operations. But when it came to developing a new approach to the CRM, there wasn't a one-size-fits-all solution because different agents use different platforms. To tackle this, it built the CRM's interface into existing tools like Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.

The first part of the solution involved putting customer and policy data into one easy-to-navigate platform. For instance, when speaking with a customer, the intelligence platform allows an agent to easily find their current policies and records of previous interactions. This data then connects to AI features within other platforms, such as tone analysis and messaging feedback.

The CRM also helps each agent suggest the customer's next steps, with the company taking inspiration from tech giants like Spotify.

"When we listen to Spotify, we get a playlist and then it recommends the next best song," Vidović said. "We use the same modeling to recognize the most appropriate product for a customer based on their needs."

The new CRM is now used in four of the company's markets in Zurich.

"We see a significant increase in customer interaction because it takes less time," Vidović said. "The agents don't need to spend so much time drafting up specific messages."

Based on Zurich's initial calculations, the team could cut servicing times by over 70%, though Vidović said that they hope to better understand the tool's impact by the end of 2025.

Transforming the insurance industry

Stephen Poux, the executive vice president of risk management at the Liberty Company Insurance Brokers, told BI that insurers, brokers, and clients were already seeing artificial intelligence's potential.

"AI is transforming insurance agents from transactional intermediaries into trusted advisors and risk consultants," he wrote.

"With AI tools automating many administrative and underwriting tasks, agents now have more capacity to focus on building deeper client relationships, offering strategic guidance, and delivering highly personalized risk solutions," he added.

Vidović said that the most challenging aspect of the rollout had been managing agent expectations: Once they understand how the customer platform and AI work together, many of them reach out to Vidović's team with new ideas.

"The challenge now is outlining the relevant features and continuing to upgrade the tool," he said. "Because it's a never-ending process."

• Banks can face security risks when customers share their financial data using third parties.
• Citizens Bank built a tool designed to let clients securely and efficiently share data.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

Banking customers often share their financial data on external platforms, such as budgeting tools and accounting software, to help them manage their money.

But for financial institutions, giving out that data can come with security risks.

One popular way to transfer banking data to other applications is "screen scraping," in which a bank's customers share their login credentials with a third-party app that then mimics user behavior to pull financial data onto the external platform.

Taira Hall, the head of enterprise payments strategy at Citizens Bank, told Business Insider the practice poses several risks to customers. Cybercriminals can exploit the third-party app to gain access to the customer's account, and the screen scraping software may misread data and display outdated or inaccurate information.

To address these issues, Citizens built an open banking API, or application programming interface, a type of technology that allows software to "plug in" and access data from other software.

The tool is designed to let customers securely access their financial data, such as balances and recent transactions, on external platforms without the need for screen scraping.

Data sharing for customers

The new tool relies on the concept of open banking, an idea that emerged in the early 2000s when online banking became more common. In its most basic form, open banking allows customers to share their financial data with service providers other than their bank.

Today, sharing data for consumers via open banking API is standard. Citizens' API, however, allows commercial customers to do the same.

Ravi de Silva, the CEO of De Risk Partners, a consortium of financial consulting firms, told BI that open banking creates a foundation for more personalized, efficient, and transparent financial services.

"Instead of locking customer data inside a single institution, open banking empowers individuals to use their own data to access better lending options, budgeting tools, and other financial services," said de Silva, who was the global head of compliance testing at Citigroup before founding De Risk Partners. "It shifts the balance of control toward the consumer, not the institution."

Citizens' commercial customers, such as stores, restaurants, and business service providers, may use open banking data to automate expense tracking or verify income for gig workers, while other banks can use the data to assess borrower risk in real time instead of relying on credit scores. The API provides access to a wide range of financial data in one place, allowing customers to easily gather information from sources like invoices and payrolls.

"Normally, commercial customers need to go through time-consuming and complicated processes involving paperwork and implementation in order to get their data from bank to external platform," Hall said. "But with the open banking API, all that's needed is linking their Citizens accounts from within the external platform, and the data starts to flow automatically."

Other banks, such as Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, have also developed opening banking APIs for their commercial customers.

A streamlined data platform

Citizens' API uses a data aggregator as a middle layer between the bank and the external platform. Instead of the bank connecting to each individual platform, it connects to a central data aggregator that can then transmit customer data, once the customer has given permission.

Hall said the API removed the need for clients to work with anyone from Citizens to share their data. It also eliminated the security risks associated with practices such as screen scraping.

The API was built largely in-house through a collaboration between Citizens' technology, product, risk, legal, and cyber teams. Hall said the primary challenges were getting the tech to work and forming relationships with the companies that aggregate the data.

Hall said the API had seen "significant" use both by consumers and business clients since it launched in March. She added that the bank had also seen a 95% reduction in screen scraping, which they measured by tracking how often financial data aggregators accessed their website.

The future of financial data

Looking ahead, de Silva said open banking would most likely evolve beyond checking and savings accounts to include data from pensions, mortgages, and investments.

"We may also see deeper integration of AI that turns financial data into predictive insights, helping consumers make smarter decisions about their money," he said.

"And as privacy regulations mature, we'll likely see a shift toward greater consumer ownership and portability of their financial identity."

• Super.com had its internal information scattered across several workspace platforms.
• The company built an artificial intelligence search tool to make a tool hub.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

The tools meant to streamline work can leave businesses stuck in a maze of messages, documents, and dashboards.

Super.com, a travel and finance platform on which customers can book hotels and earn cash and rewards, depends on various workspace platforms, including Slack, Confluence, and GitLab, to keep the business humming.

Hussein Fazal, Super.com's CEO, told Business Insider that juggling systems often slowed down day-to-day tasks. Documents, datasets, and message exchanges were scattered across platforms, which made it difficult for teams to access what they needed when they needed it.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company decided to permanently switch to remote work, which Fazal said added an extra challenge to information retrieval.

As a result, Super.com needed a central system to access information from all of its platforms.

"It's hard to just pick up information, and it can sometimes even be hard to get information," he said.

Super.com decided to build a hub that its employees could access from home. In 2022, the company teamed up with Glean, an AI startup in Palo Alto, California, to create a search platform that pulls information from across Super.com's software programs.

A personalized search tool

Enterprise search is software that allows users to look for information across various platforms and databases. Glean's platform uses ranking algorithms and generative artificial intelligence to make it easier for users to find what they're looking for.

"Glean will find the right information and produce an answer in natural language, à la ChatGPT, but with the information in the context of your enterprise," Tamar Yehoshua, the president of product and technology at Glean, told BI.

She said that it's not as straightforward as putting all the information together into one big pot. Different employees have different access permissions, so each search needs to be customized for whoever is using it.

Super.com integrated the company's most-used apps and tools, such as Slack, Confluence, GitLab, and Google Drive, into one hub. "It's personalized," she said. "It will find the information that is more relevant to you, as opposed to me, if we're in different roles and in different teams."

Yehoshua said the setup process could be challenging since some companies struggle with managing who has access to which tools. This means that the software could give out confidential information to employees.

To fix this, Glean built a data-governance layer into the search platform, which ensures rigorous access permissions. Fazal said Super.com had never had an issue with Glean's search tool giving people information they shouldn't be allowed to see.

Yehoshua added that while everybody knows how to search Google, not everyone knows how to write a good AI prompt. Glean also launched a prompt library for Super.com, which she said helped educate people on how to use the tool.

Fazal said he uses the platform multiple times a day. He added that an internal company survey found the search platform has saved employees an average of 20 minutes a day, which adds up to more than 1,500 hours saved each month across the team. The employee survey also found a 20% reduction in onboarding time for new hires.

Next steps for AI agents

Since their first partnership, in 2022, Super.com and Glean have added features to the platform. A generative-AI tool embedded into the platform, for example, helps employees draft emails and prioritize tasks using real-time company data.

For instance, if an employee asks, "What are the 10 most important things I should be working on right now?" the AI assistant will use information from Slack and Google Docs to give a customized answer to that employee.

Looking ahead, Fazal hopes to incorporate AI agents into the platform. He said the next step after prompting AI to generate a task list would be getting an AI agent to go do those things. For instance, the AI assistant might suggest arranging a meeting as an important task. The agent would then draft emails and book a meeting room to help complete that task.

"We're excited to test it out and implement that once it's ready," he said.

• Northeast Georgia Health System is using badges with location tracking to increase nurse safety.
• The devices have also helped address other challenges across the system's hospitals.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

Hospitals are among the most dangerous workplaces in the United States.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that health and social care services accounted for 73% of nonfatal workplace violence incidents in 2021 and 2022.

As frontline workers, nurses often face the highest mistreatment. In a 2023 survey by National Nurses United, eight in 10 nurses said they'd experienced workplace violence, and about 37% said they'd considered leaving the profession because of the issue.

Chris Paravate, the chief information officer of Northeast Georgia Health System, said nurses at the system were among those facing workplace violence. The network of five hospitals across Northeast Georgia provides care for more than one million people.

"Patient care can sometimes be challenging and lead to violent situations," Paravate told Business Insider. "These incidents can arise in seconds, so it's crucial to respond promptly and accurately with staff support."

While the hospitals have always had safety procedures in place, they wanted to see whether technology could make their outdated protocol safer. They trialed a location-tracking badge to improve response times for workplace violence.

Modernizing an old system

Like many other hospitals, nurses at NGHS previously relied on a panic button at the nurse station on each floor to call for help in an unsafe situation. When they couldn't reach the panic button, they had only one way to raise the alarm: shouting.

"The very idea of putting a duress button in the nurse station is ridiculous because nurses don't sit in front of a desk," Rom Eizenberg, the chief revenue officer at Kontakt.io, a healthcare analytics company, told BI.

The New York-based company designed an ID badge holder with a thin battery and button on the back. Instead of racing to a nurse station or shouting for help, nurses at NGHS can discreetly press the button when they need assistance.

The badge connects to a real-time location system, a type of technology that tracks the live location of people or objects. When the button on the safety badge is pressed, the RTLS traces the location of other nurses in the building and transmits an alert to whoever is close by via text or an overhead speaker. This means help can arrive fast without the need to notify all staff members. The security team is also alerted.

Eizenberg said the idea is to flood the room with other healthcare workers as quickly as possible in order to change the power dynamic. "We don't want to arrest people if we can avoid it. We want to de-escalate the conflict as much as we can," he said.

One tool, many uses

Paravate said 10,000 staff members were wearing the safety badges, and many nurses had reported feeling safer as a result.

Since implementing the safety badges, NGHS has discovered other ways to use location tracking across its hospitals.

For instance, one nurse may be tasked with visiting a set number of patients every hour to perform routine inspections. Previously, the nurse would have to log onto a computer and register the inspection as complete. This low-level task took up valuable time. In fact, in a survey by Google Cloud and The Harris Poll last year, clinicians reported spending nearly 28 hours a week on administrative tasks such as documentation.

Now, the safety badge automatically connects to a computer and logs when a nurse enters a patient's room to perform a routine inspection.

NGHS is also testing a system to show staff photos and job titles on a monitor in the patient's room upon entry. When a nurse enters a room, their safety badge sends a notification to the RTLS. This system then triggers the monitor to show the nurse's details.

"Patients often have numerous staff members entering their rooms for various reasons, from housekeeping to medical care," Paravate said. Displaying information about the staff who are attending to them "helps make our patients feel more comfortable and informed, while also ensuring optimal patient rounding," he added.

Paravante said the system was also planning to use RTLS to track a patient's location in order to improve care delivery. For instance, patients might be given a badge to wear during their treatment, which would be used to track metrics like waiting room times. Then, when the badge is returned during their discharge, the tracking system could automatically alert cleaning staff to prepare their room for a new patient.

A barrier to adoption

Eizenberg said coordinating care in such a busy environment could often be disjointed. While technology can be a solution, he added, adopting it across large organizations such as hospitals can take time. "Hospitals are not only complex but also conservative."

It's an issue that persists across healthcare. Esther Rodriguez-Villegas, a professor who founded the med-tech company Acurable, told BI that hospitals and clinicians could be slow to adopt new technology because of complex administrative processes and hesitation from healthcare leaders.

She estimated that about 10% to 15% of clinicians were open to using new tools. "The rest are cautious, not because they don't believe in innovation, but because their time is scarce, the stakes are high, and they've been burned before," she said.

Rodriguez-Villegas added that integrating new technology into hospitals' existing systems was also a major barrier.

"Even if clinicians love your solution, it still has to talk to their electronic health record system, fit their workflow, and not trigger an avalanche of change requests," she said. "Integration is expensive, time-wise and politically, and hospitals are overloaded as it is."

Even so, healthcare organizations are looking ahead. Research by the University of North Carolina found that nearly a fifth of US hospitals had already adopted some form of AI across their systems by 2022.

Rodriguez-Villegas said that despite the challenges, technology had the potential to reshape clinician-patient relationships. "Tech can shift entire systems from reactive to proactive," she said. "Identifying issues earlier, reaching patients who would otherwise fall through the cracks, and freeing up human capacity where it's most needed."

• The UK's Surespan builds roof hatch and floor access covers for infrastructure projects.
• It used a new security model and AR headsets to enable real-time communication on remote projects.
• This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business.

A stadium is designed to capture attention, yet one of its most fascinating elements is often ignored: the roof.

Surespan, a UK manufacturer, has worked on some of the world's biggest construction projects, from SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

It makes roof hatch and floor access covers — a small but integral part of major infrastructure projects.

The installation process isn't always easy. On-the-ground technicians rely on the knowledge of Surespan's in-house engineers, who are often thousands of miles away at the company's headquarters. Security is also a concern as the company handles sensitive information, especially when working on government designs.

Previously relying on phone calls and emails, Surespan wanted to find a faster way for its employees to collaborate as it scaled its business globally. It turned to two tech solutions: a new security model to access installation files and augmented reality headsets to enable real-time communication on remote projects.

While one engineer at Surespan told Business Insider that the construction industry could be traditional and resistant to new technology, the methods had saved the company tens of thousands of dollars.

Building a secure connection

Last year, Surespan set up an operational base in Argentina as part of its plan to expand its business in South America. But it wasn't a smooth setup: It experienced what Thomas Davies, the company's commercial director, described as a "nightmare situation" when the team in Argentina couldn't access critical design files for three days.

It had been using a virtual private network to manage digital connections.

"VPNs function on an implicit trust model," Spencer Summons, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Opliciti, said. "This approach can be likened to giving a user the keys to your office building, trusting they won't enter restricted areas."

As Surespan expanded, its in-house VPN became less reliable and required support from contractors to set up in new locations. The VPN also routed traffic through congested centralized points, which led to slower connections. When the new base opened in Argentina, the company struggled to keep up with the increased setup demands, which is why the team on the ground had to wait three additional days to access essential digital resources.

Robert Fletcher, Surespan's IT lead, wanted to find a faster way for users to connect to resources regardless of their physical location. "You have to give everyone, whether they are in the office, on a remote construction site, or traveling, dependable, secure access to company resources while juggling different time zones and differing local IT infrastructure quality," Fletcher told BI.

With the help of Zscaler, a cloud security company based in San Jose, California, the company switched to zero-trust network access, a security model that requires continuous authentication and provides a more direct connection.

Summons told BI that ZTNAs work on a "never trust, always verify" basis. He said that businesses are increasingly seeking secure remote access solutions to protect their resources as they scale. When they're working across countries, he added, security becomes even more pressing, as certain regions are more vulnerable to cybercrime.

A 2024 survey from Gartner estimated that 63% of organizations worldwide had fully or partially applied a zero-trust strategy.

While VPNs give users full network access after initial authentication, ZTNAs allow access only to the resources that they need and continuously authenticate. The tech, Summons said, is "akin to having numerous security guards checking IDs at each entry point, ensuring access to certain rooms and areas is granted only to those who are authorized and verified."

Fletcher said Surespan's new system had provided employees access to crucial resources, like design software and project files. He added that since the company switched, issues such as connection drops and slow speeds had largely disappeared because the ZTNAs connect users directly to the applications they need, rather than routing them through a busy central data center.

Bringing virtual assistance to the field

Much of Surespan's work requires on-the-ground expertise, with field technicians working on-site to install the company's roof and floor hatches. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company trialed AR headsets to connect workers on the installation sites with Surespan's engineers.

"With travel restrictions hitting hard, we needed a way for our experienced engineers, often based here in the UK, to remotely support our teams in installing complex access solutions on sites across the globe," Mikolaj Wisniewski, a senior engineer at Surespan, told BI.

The field technicians use voice-controlled headsets made by RealWear, an AR company based in Vancouver, Washington. The headsets allow engineers at the Surespan offices to see the installation site in real time. Users can also share documents, annotate views live, and provide step-by-step instructions for the technician in troubleshooting, inspection, or complex installation procedures.

The method wasn't popular at first.

"As with any new technology, there was some resistance at first due to the learning curve and skepticism about wearing the physical headset," Wisniewski said. "Construction can be quite traditional, and some team members were more comfortable with the old ways of doing things — physically being on-site or just sticking to phone calls and photos."

Despite the initial reluctance, Wisniewski said, the team was won over when they actually used the headset. Today, the tool is deployed whenever remote expertise is needed quickly.

"Our site teams and our central engineering and support functions are now much more connected," Wisniewski added. "We receive instant visual context rather than having to deal with lengthy email chains or possibly unclear photos, providing immediate visual context."

Wisniewski said the AR headsets had saved the company more than $54,000 in flights and accommodation, which would otherwise have been required for engineers to travel to installation sites. The technology has also resulted in fewer project delays, he said.

"It breaks down geographical barriers and enables much richer, faster collaboration," Wisniewski added. "The entire organization feels more responsive and connected when an engineer in the UK can provide direct guidance to someone on a site thousands of miles away."