Apu Pavithran is the Founder and CEO of Hexnode |Mitsogo. Recognized in the IT management community as a consultant, speaker, and thought leader, Apu has been a strong advocate for IT governance and Information security management. He’s passionate about entrepreneurship and spends significant time working with startups and empowering young entrepreneurs.
The COVID-19 epidemic has changed how companies run. When businesses switched to remote work patterns starting from the second quarter of 2020, many were forced to quickly update their existing IT and digital infrastructures. Unfortunately, this led to most organizations implementing quick but unsafe business operations. With the recent rise in cyber-attacks and threats, businesses are now forced to carefully review the IT and cybersecurity decisions they made in recent months as firms improvise and thrive in the new normal.
The remote work tidal wave
As the coronavirus pandemic raged on, the traditional perimeters of work became irrelevant, and we became accustomed to a new form of remote work. However, there has been a major increase in cyberattacks ever since the work-from-home scenario started. As a result, business security underwent a significant paradigm change to address the increased risks posed by a remote workforce.
Managing a remote workforce demands complete transparency into all active devices and intricate access over them in order to implement safe cybersecurity practices. During the pandemic, unified endpoint management (UEM) products like our Hexnode went from being a good practice to being a boardroom priority. UEMs give IT thorough visibility into all devices and provide remote surveillance and administration. Additionally, they enforce strict password regulations, stop users from visiting harmful websites, and offer remote control to fix any glitches.
Even though most of the workforce prefers remote work, businesses have started reopening their offices and shifted to a hybrid work model. Remote work, despite the comfort it offered the person, did not extend the same courtesy regarding enterprise data security, and cybercriminals were fast to pick up on this vulnerability, and they had their fun. The use of non-secure home or public Wi-Fi, accessing corporate data without a VPN, using personal devices for work etc., were just a few causes of these rising cyber-attacks.
Even in the hybrid work model, businesses need to make sure that they inform employees of the growing cyber threat environment. Encourage them to be alert against any unusual behavior. Frequent awareness sessions, drills etc., will help raise awareness and seriousness of the issue. Additionally, specify who to call and what to do if staff members suspect a cyberattack. It is also imperative to make some policy changes in the light of the new normal because cyber threats will be a huge part of this new normal from now on. Therefore, it is high time that businesses started investing in quality cyber security and enterprise security solutions.
The accelerated rate of digital transformation
The present threat landscape is fairly extensive since a sizable portion of the workforce still works from home. Fortunately, security firms were able to distribute their solutions using a subscription model over the open internet, thanks to a cloud-centric strategy. In essence, this approach ensures that every user, regardless of location, may use corporate security applications. It also implies that every security service may be used immediately when provisioning a new device. Furthermore, cloud-delivered apps have lower latency, are more adaptable to zero-day attacks, and are simple to configure. The shift to remote work, along with the advanced adoption of cloud technologies and the inception of low latency networks like 5G have significantly accelerated the digital transformation of work. Such a fully “cloudy” future is clearly visible on the horizon and will be essential to secure the enterprise workspace of tomorrow.
The surge in BYOD
The BYOD market has had consistent growth ever since its launch. Six out of ten businesses had BYOD policies in place by 2016, and by 2022, it was predicted that the industry would be worth $367 billion. However, the BYOD ethos was in retreat by late 2018. Employees were hesitant to combine their personal and professional lives by bringing their own gadgets to work as more employers started allowing employees to select their own corporately furnished devices. However, the pandemic rekindled the BYOD trend, and fresh research indicates that BYOD has a bright future.
UEMs will expand along with BYOD as it spreads once again since they are one of its main enablers. This helps to deal effectively with the privacy issues associated with using a personal device for work by guaranteeing that both the employee’s and employer’s privacy is always protected. By building a work profile that serves as a container for company resources, UEMs ensure user privacy through an inventive form of containerization. Along with protecting user privacy, a UEM’s endpoint security and application management features guarantee the protection and manageability of the corporate resources on these personal devices.