Page 48 - Security Today, November/December 2018

CYBERSECURITY
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CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS Organizations with remote workers should stand up to any threat
By Abhishek Iyer
Technological advancements are resulting in trends and movements that improve the quality of life and business. One such trend is the “distributed workforce,” wherein orga- nizations are willing and able to employ staff without any strict requirements for physical
presence in offices. Time saved by avoiding long commutes has been utilized to increase employee productivity as well as work-life balance. Research in 2016 found that around half of U.S. workers held jobs that allowed them to work remotely at least part of the time.
Unfortunately, technological advancement often engages in a tug-of-war with security. This rise in remote working has led to a host of security challenges that attackers continue to leverage
while targeting enterprises. Whether it is lack of awareness, le- nient policy enforcement, or deceptive attacker techniques, the result is a likely breach with serious repercussions. With the mon- etary impact of cyberattacks expected to rise to $2.1 trillion by 2019, the business risk is real and present.
All in the Cloud
Although cloud adoption has increased across the board, em- ployees working from home are much more likely to use a range of cloud-hosted applications to perform their daily tasks. While applications bought for and maintained by employers are gener- ally more secure, employees tend to use multiple open-source and free-to-use applications for actions ranging from file conversion to file transfer across systems.
Each application added to a company’s “fingerprint” increases the chances of compromise, both due to employee login data that can be vulnerable and the actual company files that are stored/
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 | NETWORKING SECURITY