Businesses and workers have benefited immensely from the introduction of home and hybrid working, but have also faced major challenges, new research shows.
A report from Fortinet shows that nearly two-thirds of companies (62%) have experienced a data breach in the past two to three years, which can be attributed at least in part to the remote work environment.
Thus, the idea of remote working introducing new risks in the workplace is no longer just theoretical, but also proven in practice. Fortinet says there are vulnerabilities in how work is organized that threat actors are actively exploiting to steal sensitive data. Typically, that data is sold on the black market, used to launch additional attacks, or used as a bargaining chip in ransom negotiations.
Training the staff
For companies that want to maintain and further develop their remote working environment, the biggest challenge is training the staff. Most of these employees are not as skilled in cybersecurity and as such are the weakest link in the security chain. To make matters worse, IT teams don’t have a full understanding of their organization’s attack surface due to the myriad of endpoints (opens in new tab) connect from different locations.
With asset ownership fuzzy, IT teams struggle to enforce zero trust network access and deploy security patches.
These risks are real, Fortinet concludes, and many organizations have not yet fully addressed them. Despite the hardships, remote work is here to stay, the report says. It goes on to say that CISOs and security leaders are increasingly spending money on new cybersecurity solutions.
Of the various technologies at their disposal, most decision makers opt for network access control tools, antiviruses, multi-factor authentication solutions and cloud security solutions.
Through: Venture Beat (opens in new tab)