As more organizations are moving to hybrid model of remote working, it’s time to look for zero trust security model. Read on to know more…
While remote work first surfaced as a temporary solution for enterprises to keep working during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now firmly established as a viable option.
According to TANIUM research, 65 percent of businesses expect at least portion of their workers to work remotely indefinitely, while McKinsey research data shows that most executives no longer expect non-essential employees to work on-site five days a week.
However, while the hybrid workforce model has improved office productivity and employee satisfaction, it has also created new cybersecurity risks.
Security Challenges in Hybrid Workforce
Because of the hybrid mode of working in organizations, the ever-popular BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy is a major cybersecurity challenge.
While it may be easy for employees to use the same device for work and personal purposes, this policy exposes the organization to many security risks. Employees are not only completing work tasks on personal devices, but they are also doing so on networks that they share with roommates and family, exacerbating the threat.
Businesses are saddled with new cybersecurity responsibilities that extend beyond their own doors, with staff dispersed across the country working on common devices and shared networks.
For instance, security teams are now in charge of remotely securing multiple endpoints, protecting IP and customer data from cybersecurity threats, and preventing service interruptions for business-critical systems. They have to achieve all of this while keeping employee friction to a minimum.
Because organizations can’t simply transfer their legacy security approaches to the new hybrid perimeter, securing a hybrid workforce is challenging. The working model of the employees in the world has changed.
For one thing that is certain is — it’s more difficult for organizations to regulate employee activity when they work remotely. Employees who work from home are also more likely to be distracted throughout the day, increasing their risk of clicking on phishing email links, leaking confidential information, or using unapproved apps.
All of these issues combine to make the hybrid workforce a tempting target for cybercriminals.
It’s straightforward that the attack surface has expanded as a result of the large number of distributed devices. Businesses that haven’t adapted their security postures to accommodate the new hybrid workforce model are putting themselves at risk.
Organizations need an adaptive security architecture to future-proof their hybrid workforces for the long term.
Why Zero Trust
Organizations benefit from zero trust because it allows IT team to maintain visibility across all endpoints in their network. Teams may then verify each endpoint for cyber threats before providing employees the required network access — and this can be done regardless of where the employees are located.
Zero trust security provides teams the ability to take preventative measures against cyberattacks with the increased level of visibility – something that other security postures can’t provide.
When organizations first began implementing remote work, several of them assumed that VPNs would suffice to meet their security requirements. However, it became obvious during the epidemic that many VPN solutions fail to support large groups of employees working remotely on the same network at the same time.
Remote working is no longer a patchwork strategy for surviving the pandemic. The hybrid work paradigm is the way of the future, and zero trust security is the only long-term security solution.
Zero Trust proposes a model that is more in line with today’s IT landscape, in which the boundary between insiders and outsiders is completely irrelevant. Business leaders adapted quickly to the hybrid workforce; now it’s time for zero trust security to catch up.