Home Offices Are Easy to Hack: 3 Keys for Security Pros
The COVID-19 global pandemic showed organizations that they did not require their workforce to be local 100% of the time. Many workplaces quickly shifted to a remote work strategy. Still, they didn’t have the foresight to consider some of the most fundamental objectives, like ensuring long-term remote work security.
Cybercriminals saw remote workers as easy targets and exploited them more often. Subsequently, attackers were more successful in their attempts because the proper security protocols were neglected, as evidenced by the rise in cyberattack complaints. The FBI reported that the number of complaints to their Cyber Division jumped to 3,000-4,000 each day—a staggering 400% increase from what they saw in 2019.
In the sudden transition to working remotely, many organizations:
- Allowed employees to make use of personal devices
- Issued company devices without a patch management strategy
- Had no visibility or control over endpoint security or software updates
- Had no visibility into employee activities, including software inventories
- Used legacy network connectivity such as VPN connections
IBM’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report noted:
“Of organizations that required remote work as a result of COVID-19, 70% said remote work would increase the cost of a data breach and 76% said it would increase the time to identify and contain a potential data breach. Having a remote workforce was found to increase the average total cost of a data breach of $3.86 million by nearly $137,000, for an adjusted average total cost of $4 million.”
In addition to the sheer number of cyberattacks skyrocketing, the size and scope of these attacks also escalated. With attackers setting their sights on businesses, more is at stake. Business data generally contains information that affects many people, is often sensitive, and is much more valuable than a single individual’s data from a ransom standpoint. Businesses are much more likely to be able to pay ransomware demands, and it’s much easier to sneak into the organization via a remote worker. And they make up approximately 40% of the workforce, according to the Flex Report Q3 2024.
These statistics help to emphasize the need to ensure IT security for remote workers. Proper security consists of a multi-faceted strategy for securing the remote workforce.
3 Ways to Ensure Remote Work Security
A proper security strategy involves people, processes, and technology. A weakness in any of these areas will degrade your organization’s overall security posture. Businesses must not neglect the people and processes aspects. From the technology side, let’s look at the top three ways organizations can ensure IT security.
- Use multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Apply security patches
- Maintain visibility
1. Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
There is no question that compromised credentials are still a huge issue facing organizations today. Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found that stolen credentials are still the most common initial action used for a breach, occurring in 24% of all reported breaches — and frighteningly — 77% of basic web application attacks. In addition, over the last decade, a staggering 31% of breaches have involved the use of stolen credentials.
Security experts agree that implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for end-users bolsters your overall security posture. MFA combines something you know (your password) with something you have (smartphone, etc.). Because of this extra layer of security, even if an attacker compromises the password, they still do not have everything needed to authenticate successfully, such as the one-time password sent to a smartphone. This can protect accounts from compromise due to a phishing attack or other attack where a password is exposed.
2. Apply Security Patches
Security patching is one of the pillars of maintaining proper security, both on-premises and in the work-from-home world. With the highly distributed workforce, organizations have to shift their processes and tooling to accommodate the change of location for end-user clients.
Organizations that used traditional patch management systems quickly found themselves in a challenging situation when their workforces went remote. On-premises patch management solutions assumed that the client would have direct connectivity to the corporate network and Active Directory infrastructure. These tools were never designed to deploy updates remotely. One workaround, deploying these updates over a virtual private network (VPN) connection, created a new batch of security, scalability, and performance challenges.
Organizations can overcome the challenge of remote work security patching by transitioning to cloud-based patch management systems. These solutions allow admins to not only manage patches on a larger scale, but also the ability to schedule and install patches at any time through a cloud-based interface.
3. Maintain Visibility
One of the most difficult challenges organizations face from a remote work security standpoint is maintaining visibility into endpoints and other devices. What kind of visibility is needed? Organizations need to maintain visibility to any activity, software, user, network connections, and other areas that may introduce risk. These may include the following checks:
- Endpoints missing critical security patches
- Endpoint security software is installed and up-to-date
- Security settings are properly configured
- Password policies are applied to the endpoint
- Dangerous accounts, such as the “guest account” are disabled
- Users have not installed unsanctioned cloud apps
Attackers or unscrupulous remote employees could “fly under the radar” without the proper visibility checks and alerting. Maintaining visibility on these and other areas helps prevent and remediate security risks before they lead to a security breach. Again, organizations will need the right technology tools to allow visibility to remote end-user devices, regardless of their physical location or network connection. Traditional end-user tools that require on-premises network connectivity are ineffective with a highly distributed workforce.
In Conclusion
The transition to a remote workforce has presented security challenges for more organizations. It requires a shift in how organizations manage remote endpoints and the technologies they use. Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), applying security patches regularly, and maintaining visibility ensures remote workers’ security and minimizes business-critical data risk. Organizations can effectively transition from traditional endpoint management to modern, cloud-based management by using cloud-based patch and security management platforms. It will empower businesses to face the challenges of the future with confidence.
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