The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak and the subsequent lockdowns led organizations to consider employee health and wellbeing in the paramount, thereby adopting remote working/ work from homes. In the wake of this situation, many threat actors are taking advantage of this. This is substantiated by the FBI releasing a warning regarding the rapid increase in the phishing attacks and the importance of staying vigilant while online. Yes, the world is becoming new in many dimensions more specifically, in network security. And the unprecedented orders like quarantine, stay at home will have a permanent effect on organizations doing business but one thing is certain, remote working has to stay. Keeping this in mind we will discuss some of the challenges organizations may face and NDZ recommendations/solutions to overcome those.
SECURITY CHALLENGES OF REMOTE WORKING/WORK FROM HOME
“The issue isn’t just one of “operational functionality”, yet in addition to Cybersecurity. For most of the organizations, having whole staff work remotely makes new security vulnerabilities.”
Increased Phishing Attacks and data breaches- In a trying situation like this, the hacker’s community springs into action. This underground community including the cyber criminals and state-sponsored threat entertainers around the globe are exploiting the prevailing covid-19 scenario to gear up their malicious activities and spreading their own infections online. Organizations using critical data are prone to these attacks so need to be alert and adopt the needful to protect your business and yourself from future loss.
Lack of security hygiene- Hackers have been working from home for years. but your team is new to this and it’s tempting for them to visit unwanted sites paving the way for cyber criminals to get into your systems.
Lack of Robustness of your legacy VPN systems- By and large, your heritage VPN servers will not have the robustness required for mass remote utilization. For instance, your corporate VPN and firewall are most likely not designed for a 4X flood. This will reduce the worker’s efficiency and expose your organization to pointless security dangers.
Use of systems and devices not approved for remote work- Many industries pose a challenge of security issues raised due to the use of systems, devices and people that are not configured or trained for remote work.
Lack of a unified system or software for management– Regulated industries like schools and universities complicates this picture, because most of them still do not have a unified system to manage all its operations. Our education management system software(click here to know more) is the right solution to this. Some may already have an on-premise system but in this time of remote work they need to be configured accordingly.
NDZ RECOMMENDATIONS
Our home network is currently the most effortless entranceway for threat actors. Keeping this in mind we are sharing some recommendations that can help you to maintain business continuity.
Assess Your Core IT Infrastructure- In a remote working environment, companies need to assess the following three categories of infrastructure to ensure a healthy IT infrastructure.
- Endpoint Assessment- Make a Record of all your IT inventories including all the applications and cyber security tools especially device ethernet MAC addresses. This will ensure a proper structure to correlate authorized devices with authorised users.
- Connection Assessment- Ensure all the connections with organization systems happen over VPNs with multi factor authentications. This can prevent spying on data transmitted between the systems. You can download VPN and token software remotely but this may need extra licenses.
- Enterprise Infrastructure Assessment- To deal with the remote work, your organization’s VPN and firewalls need to be configured. In fact, many of them are not capable of handling this 4X surge. In such cases you can opt for a cloud service provider or can purchase an additional software.
Perform Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing- The need of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing is typically disregarded by organizations neglecting the fact that hackers are searching for these vulnerabilities. So VAPT can help your organization cybersecurity weak points and patch them before the hackers find it.
Embed Cybersecurity for Business Continuity
– Include cyber security provisions in business continuity plan to thrive your business in the current situation of remote working. Some of the provisions you can include are:
- Guarantee emergency security access to cyber security teams
- Train a backup team for remote support
- Define clear communication plans
- Adapt these plans
Looking ahead- Each of the challenges and the solutions mentioned above are based on the careful examination of the prevailing security environment. The intensity and its effect on the organisation functions vary from business to business. If you need a complete analysis and solution specific to your business contact us @ nayana.joy@ndimensionz.com
We can handle your network performance monitoring, vulnerability detection and response, and end-user support, so you can focus on what matters most to you. Get in touch today.