New research has shown that businesses and workers have benefited enormously from the introduction of remote and hybrid working, but have also faced significant challenges.
A Fortinet report found that nearly two-thirds of companies (62%) suffered a data breach in the last two to three years, which can be at least partially attributed to the remote working environment.
The idea of remote work introducing new threats to the workplace is therefore not only theoretical, but also proven in practice. Fortinet says there are vulnerabilities in the way we work that cybercriminals are actively exploiting to steal sensitive data. Typically, this data is sold on the black market, used to launch additional attacks, or used as a bargaining chip in ransom negotiations.
Workforce training
For companies looking to maintain and grow their remote working environment, the biggest challenge is workforce training. Most of these employees are not as proficient in cybersecurity and as such are the weakest link in the security chain. To make matters worse, IT teams don’t have a full view of their organization’s attack surface due to countless endpoints (opens in a new tab) connections from different places.
Due to the dilution of asset ownership, IT teams have difficulty enforcing zero trust networks and deploying security patches.
These threats are real, concludes Fortinet, and many organizations still have not fully addressed them. However, despite the difficulties, remote work will stay with us, we read in the report. In addition, it is said that CISOs and security leaders are spending more and more money on new cybersecurity solutions.
Among the different technologies at their disposal, most decision makers choose network access control tools, antivirus programs, multi-factor authentication solutions and cloud security solutions.
By: VentureBeat (opens in a new tab)