The challenge of remote working and cybersecurity

The four-step roadmap to “free­dom day” on June 21 has now been laid out by the UK gov­ern­ment. Despite a clear, data-dri­ven end in sight for the social restric­tions coro­n­avirus has inflict­ed upon us, there is no doubt in lead­er­ship dis­cus­sions world­wide that there will be long-last­ing changes in work­place and work­force trends.

Remote work­ing will remain in place even when vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes enter the annu­al boost­er phase. A sur­vey con­duct­ed by Omdia found that at least one third of the glob­al work­force will work remote­ly at any one time and hybrid work­ing envi­ron­ments will become com­mon­place.

The importance of cybersecurity

Although the ini­tial scram­ble was to ensure employ­ees could remain pro­duc­tive and con­nect­ed when the pan­dem­ic first began, longer term IT and human resources teams must ensure secu­ri­ty is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion in an ongo­ing remote envi­ron­ment and that employ­ees under­stand the risks. The rush to move employ­ees to remote work­ing often came at the expense of secu­ri­ty, which was under­stand­able giv­en the speed and scale of change.

Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is one of the largest threats to glob­al busi­ness and, with tar­get­ed attacks on the rise, resilience is para­mount. With remote work­ing prac­tices a new nor­mal­i­ty, employ­ees are increas­ing­ly work­ing with a mix­ture of cor­po­rate-owned and per­son­al devices. In addi­tion, they are access­ing com­pa­ny and cus­tomer data and appli­ca­tions in the cloud beyond the tra­di­tion­al enter­prise perime­ter.

Omdia’s Future of Work Sur­vey indi­cat­ed respon­dents believe the most chal­leng­ing aspect of remote work­ing is ensur­ing employ­ees can work secure­ly and in com­pli­ance with indus­try require­ments across mul­ti­ple sec­tors. Mov­ing the same secu­ri­ty approach from the office to remote work­ing is not enough and employ­ees must be edu­cat­ed on secu­ri­ty from home. 

In the same sur­vey, of approx­i­mate­ly 5,000 organ­i­sa­tions, few­er than 43 per cent have a ful­ly devel­oped or well-advanced proac­tive approach to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and dig­i­tal risk, which is alarm­ing.

Empowering employees with new technology

Busi­ness­es need to evolve their approach­es to secu­ri­ty and invest in new and more advanced mobile secu­ri­ty capa­bil­i­ties. Mobile secu­ri­ty presents a diverse set of asso­ci­at­ed threats that busi­ness­es must mit­i­gate and should man­age as part of a broad­er approach and strat­e­gy for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, espe­cial­ly if organ­i­sa­tions are to ensure they can sus­tain cur­rent lev­els of remote work­ing. 

A busi­ness-wide and uni­fied view is impor­tant as approach­es to secu­ri­ty and the solu­tions that under­pin these should not be adopt­ed in a siloed fash­ion to be tru­ly effec­tive.

Employ­ees will need to be empow­ered with new tech­nolo­gies that can help them work in new ways, but in a fash­ion that does­n’t expose the organ­i­sa­tion to a lev­el of risk that’s unman­age­able. VPN sys­tems and pre-exist­ing secu­ri­ty approach­es were not designed to sup­port a large remote work­force. Many organ­i­sa­tions are still using a mish­mash of secu­ri­ty con­trols that are not fit for remote work­ing. They also need reg­u­lar review to make them more robust and sus­tain­able.

It is impor­tant organ­i­sa­tions con­sid­er not just the tech­nolo­gies that can help, but also changes to peo­ple and process prac­tices. Indi­vid­u­als and employ­ees are equal­ly as respon­si­ble for secu­ri­ty and need to adopt a secu­ri­ty mind­set that will only come with improv­ing the aware­ness and edu­ca­tion of risks asso­ci­at­ed with remote work­ing and solu­tions. This needs to hap­pen reg­u­lar­ly and at fre­quent inter­vals.

Increas­ing employ­ee engage­ment gen­er­al­ly, and not lim­it­ing it to edu­ca­tion, will also help employ­ees. As we con­tin­ue to work remote­ly, an increase in organ­i­sa­tion­al sup­port for men­tal health is crit­i­cal in build­ing and sus­tain­ing engage­ment for remote work­ers. This should include reg­u­lar health and well­be­ing sup­port and man­ag­er check-ins as just a few exam­ples. It is nat­ur­al peo­ple who feel engaged will play a bet­ter part in secure remote work­ing for any organ­i­sa­tion.

Peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions com­bined will play the most piv­otal part in pro­tect­ing an organ­i­sa­tion from poten­tial secu­ri­ty threats.