Remote Working: The Benefits and Challenges

Remote and hybrid working have become increasingly popular among businesses and employees, providing flexibility and convenience. However, a recent report by Fortinet has revealed that almost two-thirds of firms (62%) have suffered a data breach during the last two to three years, which could be attributed to the remote working environment.

Fortinet’s report highlights the vulnerabilities in the way work is being organized that threat actors actively exploit to steal sensitive data. This data is either sold on the black market, used to mount additional attacks, or used as a bargaining chip in a ransom negotiation.

Training the Workforce

For businesses looking to keep and advance their remote working environment, the biggest challenge is training the workforce. Most remote workers aren’t proficient in cybersecurity, presenting the weakest link in the security chain. To make matters worse, IT teams don’t have full visibility into their organization’s attack surface, due to countless endpoints connecting from various locations.

With asset ownership blurry, IT teams struggle to enforce zero trust network access and deploy security patches. Despite the hardships, remote working is here to stay, and CISOs and security leaders are spending increasing amounts of money on new cybersecurity solutions.

Among the different technologies they have at their disposal, most decision-makers go for network access control tools, antivirus programs, multi-factor authentication solutions, and cloud security solutions.

• Check out the best business VPNs around

Source: VentureBeat

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.