The Top 10 Risks Of The Remote Workforce & How To Solve Them

 

It seems like the COVID 19 pandemic is now but just a past memory.  But, while this may be true, the variants of it are still out there, and are affecting people to varying degrees.  One of the offshoots of the pandemic was the Remote Workforce.  While this has never been a new concept, the degree to which it happened is something that no individual or business could have ever predicted.  But fast forward to now, and the Remote Workforce is still strong. 

While many companies are now trying to adopt a hybrid-based approach, many employees still prefer the Remote Workforce.  And, why not?  As long as they are getting the work done and meeting goals, what difference does it really matter where they work from?  In fact, it has been shown in the  past couple of years Working From Home (WFH) actually makes for a much happier employee.

But even more importantly, now that we have understood the ramifications of a near 99% Remote Workforce, the Cybersecurity aspects of it must also be addressed.  Remember the threats that happened when the pandemic first hit?  Such as the risks of intermeshing of the corporate and home networks?  And that ever famous “Zoombombing”?  While these may now be or more mitigated, CISOs and their respective IT Security teams need to realize that the Remote Workforce is now a permanent fixture in the American society, and the Cyber risks that are inherent with it must be addressed.

So, here are a few areas which need to be paid attention to:

1)     Data In Transit:

This simply refers to the flow of network communications that take place between the server and the remote device, and even vice versa.  While the traditional VPN has proved successful in encrypting this, it showed its vulnerabilities during the height of the pandemic.  Therefore, it is highly recommended that you make use of something more advanced such as the Next Generation Firewall.

2)     Data At Rest:

These are the datasets that are not being transacted or processed, but rather, they are simply sitting in a static mode in your database.  While they may not be being used, it is still highly imperative that you protect them to the highest degree that you can.  This has, and continues to be of one of the prized targets for the Cyberattacker.  Even more so, if you don’t protect these kinds of datasets with the right type of controls, you could be in for a serious audit by the regulators of the data privacy laws, such as the GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, etc.

3)     The IAM:

This is an acronym that stands for “Identity and Access Management”.  Simply put, this is the policy that you have in place to assign the rights, privileges, and permissions to each employee.  The cardinal rule here is to follow the concept of “Least Privilege”.  This merely states that you don’t give employees any more access than they need to in order to do their daily job tasks.  If you are in the Cloud, such as with Microsoft Azure, there are many IAM tools that you can deploy in just a matter of a few minutes.

4)     The Endpoints:

These are the devices that your Remote Workforce is using.  One of the other major problems during the pandemic was that employees were using their own, personal devices in which to do their job tasks, due to the fact that businesses simply did not have enough endpoints that could be provisioned in time.  But now that we have learned this lesson, it is imperative now to fortify them with either an EDR or XDR based solution.

5)     DDoS and Phishing:

The first one is an acronym that stands for “Distributed Denial of Attacks”. This is where the Cyberattacker launches a flood of rogue data packets to the server so that it will come to a grinding halt, and unable to serve the resources to the end users.  And of course, we all probably know about, and have at least heard of Phishing.  While these are some of the oldest threat variants, they are still being used quite a bit even today.  Therefore, you need to take the appropriate protective measures to mitigate this from happening.

6)     The Zero Trust:

The traditional security model in Cyber has been that of the “Perimeter Defense”.  Essentially, this is where  only circle of defense surrounds the business, and all of the defensive mechanisms are thrown at it.  But guess what?  If the Cyberattacker were to break through this, they will then have total reign over your IT/Network Infrastructure.  To avoid this, it is imperative that you implement what is known as the “Zero Trust Framework”  This is where the Infrastructure is segmented out into different zones, and each one has their own layer of defensive measures, primarily making use of MFA.  This is where at least three or more differing authentication measures are used to confirm the identity of the employee.  The idea here is that that the statistical odds of the Cyberattacker from breaking into your “Crown Jewels” becomes almost zero, given all of the layers that they have to break through.

7)     Software Patches:

This is also one of the other cardinal rules in Cybersecurity.  You and your IT Security team must keep vigilant of the respective software patches and updates that come out from your vendors, even including the firmware.  They also must be downloaded and deployed in a regular fashion.  To make this effective, have a dedicated resources that can keep tabs on this.

8)     The Plans:

The pandemic taught CISOs one very painful lesson:  The need to have Incident Response/Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Plans.  Not only should they be documented, but they also must be rehearsed at least once a quarter, and updated with the lessons learned.

9)     The Training:

Probably even more now than ever before, you need to have regular Security Awareness Training programs for your employees.  These also must be done at least once a quarter, if not more often.  But one very important thing to remember here is not to take a “one size fits all” approach  to the training.  They must be specifically tailored to the audience to whom you are delivering it to. 

10)  Compliance:

Today, data privacy is very much a hot button topic, especially with the advancements that are being made in Generative AI.  Therefore, you need to make sure that you are in compliance with all of the applicable data privacy laws that you are supposed to abide by.  One of the best ways to do this is to conduct a Penetration Test, in order to find any vulnerabilities, and from there, remediate them quickly.

My Thoughts On This:

While these tips just provided are meant to protect your Remote Workforce, they should also be used in everyday practice to make sure that your employees, no matter where they are located in the world, are always maintaining a strong level of Cyber Hygiene.