Remote work technology continues to be a prime target for cybersecurity attacks.

Recent research released by Tenable in collaboration with Forrester found that nearly three quarters of organizations have traced recent cyberattacks that have impacted their businesses to vulnerabilities in remote work technology. Even before the pandemic began, the traditional perimeter around enterprise IT infrastructure had become rather porous due to increased mobility of workers and cloud adoption. With a hybrid workforce that has fully embraced remote access tools, cloud services, and personal devices, that perimeter is pretty much gone.

The Tenable / Forrester research found that 80 per cent of security and business leaders say remote work has put their organizations at higher risk because IT teams lack visibility into remote employee home networks as more than half of remote workers use a personal device to access work data. This has meant three quarters of cyber attacks are targeting remote employees. Threat actors are also exploiting third-party software providers or leveraging vulnerabilities in those products, with 65 per cent respondents linking those compromises to recent cyberattacks. 

For small and medium-sized businesses, it can be challenging to invest a great deal of money in security technology and dedicated IT staff, but there several core things that can help to better protect remote work technology from cybersecurity attacks.

• Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN): Implementing a VPN for anyone accessing corporate data and applications via the Internet provides an additional layer of security via multi-factor authentication and should be required for anyone looking to access valuable company intellectual property and other sensitive data.
• Use complex passwords: Many employees opt for simple passwords they can remember and use them for more than one application or website, which means once a hacker guesses one of them, they have access to a great deal of private information. Since these can be difficult to remember, consider implementing password encryption software that stores usernames and passwords without the need to know what they are because the information is encrypted from the start.

• Educate everyone: Having the right technology in place only goes so far; you need a culture where all employees understand the need for complex passwords, log in via VPNs, and recognize phishing attacks and other suspicious emails. In addition to employee training, set aside a budget for your cybersecurity team to attend webinars and other courses that help them keep up with an ever-changing threat landscape.
• Keep everything up to date: Whether it’s hardware or software, getting behind upgrades and patches is sure fire to create vulnerabilities that threat actors will support. While much of this can be automated, you should have a program in place to verify all necessary updates are done on schedule.
• Pick a reputable cloud service provider: A great deal of security misconfigurations that lead to data breaches are the result of connecting with the many cloud services available to businesses today. Make sure your chosen providers have a solid track record on the security front and understand what they’re responsible for securing and what must be done at your end.

Keeping ahead of cybersecurity attacks has always been a challenge and the remote work era hasn’t made it easier. Consider seeking out a managed security services partner who can help you evaluate your security posture, implement new technologies and policies, and automate where possible so that your business is a less appealing target for threat actors.