International. Nowadays teleworking or "Home Office" has been imposed as the indicated work modality to avoid the movement of people, and with it, the spread of the Coronavirus and to maintain the operation of companies. While more and more organizations have adopted new work dynamics, the current landscape has boosted those that were not strongly decided.
For several years now, the use of mobile devices by remote employees has increased telecommuting, according to a survey by WatchGuard and CITE Research, which found that 90% of mid-market companies have employees who work half their week away from the office.
While remote work can increase productivity and reduce wear and tear, it comes with its own set of security risks. Cybercriminals are constantly on the prowl and this global pandemic scenario is even more attractive.
In this context, one of the challenges that companies face when enabling a mobile workforce is the possibility of being subject to cyber attacks, which have increased significantly. The different analyses show that the main attack vectors are aimed at end users, reason to keep in mind that the most lucrative attacks that have been taking place in Argentina have been those of ransomware.
Without the benefit of their core network protections, mobile employees often work without any network perimeter security, missing out on an important part of a layered security defense and could become infected without their knowledge and even introduce the infection into their wider environment when it reconnects to their network.
In addition, mobile devices can often mask telltale signs of phishing attacks and other security threats.
According to this panorama, from WatchGuard we warn about the dangers of implementing remote work without taking into account the security of the systems and access to data.
The main risk that arises in this work scheme is the connection to insecure Wi-Fi networks. Usually you do not think about it because you are at home, but it is essential to make sure that you are connecting to a "Secure" network, that is, that it is your network and not an alternate network.
To increase the safety of remote workers and keep the business going, it is advisable to implement these 7 steps:
1. Examine your company's plan to continue operations while employees are away from the office.
2. Review policies to communicate the expectations of mobile and remote workers.
3. Train employees to avoid falling victim to cybersecurity attacks while working from home.
4. Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect identities and applications.
5. Expand VPN capacity as needed for increased demand for remote access.
6. Help remote employees enable secure Wi-Fi networks.
7. Apply zero trust principles in networks and applications.
WatchGuard's goals for this year are focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Security for EndPoints or "User Centric".
AI allows to automate the prevention, detection and response of threats on the network together with Passport (security for EndPoint) that during this year has developed different modules, such as improved EDR, to ensure that the tasks of Multifactor Authentication, Content Filtering and Security are increasingly robust.
All this is complemented by the purchase of Panda and the integration of its products into our portfolio of solutions.
* Author: Sonnia Reyes Jairala, Territory Manager South of Latin-America at WatchGuard Technologies.
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