Mastering Security in a Hybrid-Work Setting
With organizations facing increased pressures, it’s time for organizations to rise to the challenge of successfully prioritizing security in hybrid work environments.
Mastering Security in a Hybrid-Work Setting
After a period of getting used to it, the new dynamic has been a positive experience for most – so much so that it’s quickly becoming an essential opportunity for businesses to retain existing talent and recruit new people. Matt Diebolt, CTO, Poll Everywhere, discusses how enterprises can ensure security even in an actively hybrid workforce.
At this point, we have all experienced the benefits of remote work firsthand, from increased productivity to a sense of work autonomy and flexibility. With the new paradigm has come new logistical challenges – particularly a significantly heightened concern around data security. Employees are now connecting to company servers and accessing data from various remote locations, many with public wi-fi connectivity, which poses new challenges as previous security protocols can no longer be enforced to the level they once were – a dangerous reality, considering that IBM reports the average data breach costs $3.92 million.
With organizations facing increased pressures, it’s time for organizations to rise to the challenge of successfully prioritizing security in hybrid work environments – after all, they’re not going anywhere.
Creating clear cybersecurity policies
Like anything else in the corporate world, we need to establish protocols that set the bar for success. A good cybersecurity policy is specific, functional, and resilient. The goal must be to create a policy that’s powerful enough to block unwanted network intruders and permissive enough to let employees utilize their information and data in a streamlined way. This makes their day-to-day easier while maintaining the safety of organizational data.
Another crucial factor for creating robust processes is bringing together internal team members for collaboration. Compliance and security leaders play an essential role in working together to craft policies, ensure compliance within these policies, and stay on top of vulnerabilities and attacks being used against other companies.
Setting Up a Foundation for Success
When you think about your organization’s security structure, it’s essential to reflect on the decisions taken to build the entire foundation. Think about it like this – a building can’t be constructed atop a weak foundation. The same applies to your company’s security policies. Reviewing the status of existing operations is a job for the compliance and security team, as part of their responsibility is staying updated on best community practices, current threats that are gaining traction, and how they can be avoided.
In their audit, the team should ensure that all third-party software and technology partners used within the company have strong security standards in place – this should be done regularly as part of internal security protocols. As a first step, they should go back and review policies, looking out for any red flags, for example, if in their terms of services they don’t mention any significant regulations that are getting a lot of press, such as GDPR policies and CCPA policies.
In addition, each tool should have updated terms of service and data processing policies that reflect updated industry best practices. Companies with a strong security posture often lead with trust pages that lay out their approach to security clearly and prominently. It’s key to ensure partners have thorough standards set in place. If they don’t, it might be time to reconsider them, but if they do, your company is one step closer to having a solid security program.
See More: How To Minimize Disruption When Security Vulnerabilities Are Revealed
Training Teams to Be Prudent
Beyond confirming that everything looks good on the structural side of security, communicating the intentions of these effort employees and training them to adhere to new protocols is of utmost importance. Standardization is a crucial element of a successful security policy, as it ensures that the plan you build has no weak points or loose ends.
Explaining security can be a dry subject, so engaging employees is essential to ensure they retain the information. Organizational leaders charged with training should aim to keep it light and fun while hammering home the action from employees that is critical to maintaining security compliance. Covering the basics, such as popular types of attacks like social engineered attacks and weird emails, is a great place to start to ensure everyone is on the same page. The goal of these conversations is to train your staff to use their best judgment, adhere to specific security dos and don’ts, and practical security knowledge, rather than to quiz employees on arbitrary facts and figures.
Resilience Above All
When it seems like we’re reading about a new major breach every day, cybersecurity can be a daunting undertaking. However, there are steps that organizations can take to reduce their exposure to threats. As we’ve learned, creating strong standards will offer a tremendous advantage, and leading with a strong security focus is non-negotiable in our digital-driven world. Altogether, the most critical takeaway is this – cybersecurity policies should be functional, ready to evolve, employee-friendly, standardized, followed by all, and comprehensive. These considerations should set organizations on the right track for success, irrespective of the obstacles in the evolving hybrid work paradigm.
How are you ensuring that your security policies are employee-friendly? Tell us all about it on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to learn from you!
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