While most organisations have embraced remote working, the one area that is proving to be the weakest link is security.
The fact is that for most organisations, working from home is a new and ultimately foreign concept. The technology, operations, and policies they have employed simply aren’t up to the task of protecting one of any enterprise’s most important assets – its data.
This worrying trend is supported by a recent survey where a staggering 85 percent of CISOs admitted to sacrificing security to enable remote working.
Why are remote workers less secure than those in the office?
Historically, the solutions that protect corporate networks have been focused on physical locations where people work such as offices and production facilities.
In the office people are far more careful about the websites that they visit and the files that they download/upload, when they have colleagues and an IT department looking over their shoulder. Away from the office, it’s an entirely different matter and opens up a frightening array of threats from unscrupulous individuals.
This has been exacerbated by the huge surge in the use of cloud-based services such as Microsoft 365. Hackers are very aware of the security challenges posed by the new distributed workforce and as a result are actively seeking opportunities to exploit this situation to their advantage.
As a result, the rapid adoption of remote working has provided hacking groups with new and growing means with which to gain access to accounts and networks.
Failure to ensure that every corporate device is continually updated, patched, protected, and connected securely to the internet at all times, is basically an open invitation for hackers to access your data.
2020 has seen a sharp increase in hacking campaigns, especially ransomware.
While viruses and malware can reap havoc across an organisation, ransomware can bring it to its knees.
According to the 2020 Threat Hunting report from Crowdstrike, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a huge rise in sophisticated hands-on hacking campaigns. These hands-on intrusions are when human hackers actively explore compromised systems themselves rather than relying on automated programmed scripts.
Most worryingly, there has been a massive increase in the number of ransomware attacks since the lockdown, with Bitdefender’s Mid-Year Threat Landscape report claiming a 715% year-on-year increase in ransomware attacks.
A single attack can cost the unfortunate recipient a fortune, as the University of California at San Francisco discovered when it paid a partial ransom demand of over $1 million to recover files locked down by a ransomware infection.
So be afraid, be very afraid, as a single ransomware attack on an unsecured device could cost your organisation a staggering amount.
How Quadris puts security at its very heart of the Managed Digital Workspace.
To deal with the threats presented to home and office workers, Quadris provides a future-focused Managed Digital Workplace with security at its very core and powered by:
- VMware Workspace ONE intelligence-driven Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform
- Cisco Umbrella Secure internet gateway (SIG) for remote users
- Cisco Secure Endpoint (formerly AMP for Endpoints).
- Cisco Talos Intelligence Group
- Quadris Security Operations Centre (SOC)
(For a more in-depth look at the functionality and features offered by all the above click here.)
This powerful set of services combines to deliver comprehensive protection and continual threat analysis to every end user – no matter where they are working:
- Advanced policy control of digital workspace equipment, including encryption, USB access, patching, and application use
- Web access control through DNS-based internet proxy for mobile devices and Windows desktops
- Immediate identification and prevention of malicious data packets that are attempting to infiltrate your network
- Monitor any potential cyber-threats that are on the horizon, before they impact your network
To find out more about how the Quadris security solution ensures your people are as protected when working remotely as they are in the office, contact Peter Grayson on 0161 537 4980 or email peter.grayson@quadris.co.uk
