Cybersecurity in the new normal: Securing the distributed workforce

TECH CENTRAL

The events of 2020 have brought about radical changes for the cybersecurity industry. The way that businesses work dramatically changed, and IT and security organisations were challenged to support a completely remote workforce – often within 24 hours. The rapid expansion to cloud and accelerated growth of IT assets, combined with a severe shortage of security personnel, has left organisations struggling to protect against cybersecurity attacks effectively and proactively.

A new global survey explores how security practitioners and C-level executives have addressed the demands of securing remote workers, and what the future implications are from these decisions.

Key findings of the report include:

The distributed workforce is here to stay — 70% believe that one-third of employees will be remote 18 months from now.

The move to remote working has introduced new risk — 73% of C-level executives are concerned that the distributed workforce has introduced new vulnerabilities and increased exposures.
Critical tasks have been deprioritised — Although mobile vulnerabilities have increased by 50%, BYOD policies have been downgraded.

There is a crisis of overconfidence — Despite 93% expressing confidence that changes have been properly validated, over half said it was at least moderately difficult for them to validate that configurations did not introduce risk.

Cybersecurity in the new normal: Securing the distributed workforce