The security risks of working remotely: cybersecurity paradigm changes to protect the digital workplace

The work landscape has changed. In an increasingly global marketplace, partners and contractors are spread farther afield, and employees expect greater flexibility than ever in their hours and work locations. The workplace has migrated out of the office and into a digital space, and with an increase in remote work comes a new array of security risks that legacy cybersecurity models are not equipped to adequately address.

To protect the larger attack surface of modern businesses, experts rely on a zero-trust security philosophy and a suite of leading-edge security tools and practices. Beyond simply hardening a network against anticipated attacks, these approaches instead depend on proactively verifying the legitimacy of the devices and people who connect, the access they request, and the behavior they display.

This article will explore several core strategies and tools enabling this new cybersecurity paradigm.

Learn more: Three ways to enable and support your workforce of the future

Securing the digital workplace against remote risks

Beyond simply securing a local area network, businesses today are tasked with preventing unauthorized access while keeping company resources broadly available to authorized users of every type. Legacy firewalls offer one line of defense, but once breached, they present little further resistance to a threat actor. Businesses need a more targeted way to address the security risks of a remote-friendly working environment. To that end, modern cybersecurity tools support securing endpoints, creating secure communication channels, and thoroughly—and continuously—confirming user identity.

Authorizing and securing devices

Each mobile device that accesses your business network represents a point of vulnerability. Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies and the numerous company-owned and personal devices users access create a need for robust device management and protection.

Mobile device management (MDM) platforms allow organizations to register devices as early as their purchase. Both company-owned and BYO devices can be provisioned at a distance with a profile designed by administrators, streamlining deployment for remote workers and mitigating risk by ensuring company security and data protection policies are applied.

To identify threats in the device ecosystem, endpoint detection and response (EDR) is essential. More than a simple antivirus measure, EDR leverages AI and human intelligence to identify and neutralize malicious content or behavior, keeping individual devices secured and limiting the impact of potential breaches.

Protecting data in use and at rest

Cloud platforms and applications are the future of business, and the data stored in them is one of a company’s most valuable assets, making securing these platforms mission-critical. However, reliable and swift access to key SaaS tools and business data are equally critical for daily operations.

Modern, cloud-based networks are no longer limited to hardwired LANs. Instead, they are defined by software (SD-WAN), and organizations have a much greater degree of flexibility in scaling and managing them. Secure access service edge (SASE) is a consolidated platform for securely connecting end users to your organization’s cloud resources.

SASE provides a much quicker connection to cloud resources for users working remotely as opposed to legacy processes, which backhaul authentication and content delivery through an onsite data center. Fully featured solutions also include secure browsers for users working on unmanaged or personal devices and application acceleration to enhance the speed of remote working while minimizing security risk.

Verifying identity

From a cybersecurity standpoint, the characteristics of an authorized user are more varied and harder to distinguish from a threat actor than they once were. External partners, contractors, and employees in distant locations need regular access to data stored in the cloud or SaaS platforms. Establishing and verifying a user’s identity on an ongoing basis is crucial to maintaining the security of business data and limiting the security risks of remote work.

The discipline of verifying user identity and administering access to company resources is identity and access management (IAM). While IAM can be achieved through a collection of multiple tools, such as single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA), centralized systems create fewer opportunities for failure or desynchronization.

With a unified IAM system, technology teams can implement role-based access control (RBAC) with automated processes, which can, for example, change a user’s permissions when they change departments. Limited permissions also mitigate the effects of a compromised account and simplify logging its activities and disabling it. AI-driven IAM systems can intelligently analyze user behavior, flag suspicious activity, or even permit or prevent access based on certain user characteristics like location or device.

Learn more: The essential guide to security assessments

Cybersecurity modernization is a journey and CBTS is your expert guide

The field of cybersecurity is growing increasingly sophisticated, as are the threats it prevents. New collaboration and remote working approaches have created new security risks and revealed new attack surfaces. Organizations need knowledgeable support to navigate these waters while empowering their remote and hybrid teams.

CBTS provides businesses with the tools to modernize their cybersecurity posture. From strategy to implementation, CBTS helps you build the right security platform for your organization, and offers managed security services to augment your staff and infrastructure.

To upgrade your cybersecurity against the modern threat landscape, contact CBTS today.