Remote Working One Year On: What the Future Holds for Cybersecurity
We are approaching a time when people will start returning to the workplace. Yet with many organizations now embracing a “remote-first” model, where employees will work at home either all or some of the time, what will this mean for cybersecurity?
by Daan Jacobs
Battling a Varied and Growing Threat
As with many elements of life, COVID-19 served to accelerate trends that were already taking place. This certainly applies to the volume of threats facing cybersecurity teams. Social engineering lures are a good example. These are fake but realistic emails sent to employees about current events which try to get them to click a link. When COVID-19 first emerged, criminals played on people’s fears and anxiety about the pandemic with emails about PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and fundraising appeals for COVID-19 victims.
It was harder for cybersecurity teams to keep a watchful eye on such activity with employees working from home. This is where advanced email security solutions can play an important role. These detect phishing emails and remove threats from messages, documents and other files and disable any URLs before they even enter the network, a process known as content sanitization.
Increased File Sharing
Digital collaboration between internal and external teams has become much more common in business generally over the past decade, especially with the widespread adoption of applications such as DropBox and OneDrive. Yet they are not without risk in terms of cybersecurity. With employees spread to different locations during the pandemic, the increased need to share files increased the cybersecurity risk even more.
HelpSystems’ GoAnywhere MFT uses encryption and authentication to keep enterprises safe when sharing files and can also be deployed with Clearswift’s Secure ICAP Gateway. This adds an additional layer of content inspection and automatic sanitization to the data being transferred providing even greater protection for employees, whether in the office or working from home. Crucially, it does so without interrupting the information flow and file sharing that is such an important part of modern business.
The Need for Cybersecurity Agility
What is clear is that we will not return to the same working patterns as we did before the pandemic took hold. Some people may want to return to the office, and others have enjoyed the work/life balance improvements that can be had from working at home, so the future of work will likely combine the two.
More than ever, cybersecurity teams need to be agile to changing requirements and situations. In terms of technology, this means providing the best software tools to enable your remote workforce to collaborate securely. Cybersecurity teams need to also design solid processes and provide relevant training. This is just as important as the technology in keeping an organization secure and compliant. Doing this ensures that when people work from home, they don’t cut corners and are as switched on and aware of potential threats as they would be in the office.
For more information on tools to secure the remote workforce, schedule a demo or contact a product specialist at BlueFinch: sales@bluefinch.com
