Whether or not businesses have decided to move into a hybrid or all-remote working arrangement for their employees, there is no doubt that hybrid working environments are here to stay. There are many benefits that these arrangements provide to growing organizations, and having the flexibility to access talent from all over the world can be a strong motivator for organizations to adopt this new type of working structure.
However, while remote working arrangements do offer a number of benefits in the form of more adaptability and opportunities for scale, they also introduce a number of unique security challenges. It’s important for businesses to recognize these new threats to their digital security and implement effective strategies to mitigate them.
Cybersecurity Risks in Hybrid Working Environments
The increased flexibility businesses gain from supporting remote working arrangements can come at a cost. These scenarios also create increased cybersecurity risks that organizations should be aware of.
Expanded Attack Surfaces
In a traditional office environment, IT teams have a more complete picture of their organization’s digital security perimeter and are able to adequately support its integrity. However, when that perimeter starts to expand outside of the confines of an office building, the scope of their work becomes much more complex.
In hybrid working models, the organization is putting more of the onus on employees to secure their own home Wi-Fi networks or use unsupervised best practices when keeping their computing environment secure. This is often very hard to mandate and creates a much larger attack surface for the company as a whole to manage.
Data Visibility and Monitoring Challenges
One of the most effective ways businesses can strengthen the security of their systems and networks is by applying network traffic monitoring. This helps to identify when certain anomalies are appearing in the business network that could point to malicious activities – allowing them to be quickly addressed. However, when employees are connected to business networks from outside sources, this traffic is much harder to monitor.
When there is a lack of centralized visibility of network activity, it can be significantly harder for IT teams to recognize potentially dangerous interactions with sensitive company data. Without the right tools and solutions in place, businesses with remote teams are essentially flying blind, hoping their employees are doing their part to keep the company protected at all times when it comes to digital security.
Shadow IT
When businesses first adopt new hybrid working arrangements, there is often some disorganization that can come with the process. If organizations are used to a certain way of doing things, they may need to reinvent the wheel in order to keep their remote teams productive and accountable.
Many times, this new state of chaos can lead to something called “shadow IT.” Shadow IT is when organizations lose visibility or even control over the amount of new solutions that teams adopt in an effort to stay on task or keep teams operations.
This often happens in remote settings where department heads are given a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to subscribing to SaaS (Software-as-a-Solution) platforms or other cloud-connected technologies.
The largest problem with shadow IT is that it creates a variety of blindspots for the organization when it comes to who has access to what information and how it’s being accessed day-to-day.
This will many times become a primary source of security breaches as roles or permissions change over time with no one qualified to vet database access or certain network activities.
Lack of Employee Awareness
While most employees will be excited at the opportunity to work from home, not all of them understand the responsibility that comes with it.
Cybersecurity isn’t something that just the employer should prioritize – especially when affording employees the flexibility to work in and out of the office. There needs to be an awareness of the importance of learning and applying best security practices at all times when working in a hybrid setting.
Unfortunately, though, there are many companies that don’t having the resources or training to understand their role when keeping the organization’s data and system integrity secure.
Effective Strategies for Strengthening Hybrid Cybersecurity
In order to effectively counteract many of the risks associated with supporting a hybrid workforce, businesses need to take proactive measures to help ensure their security is prioritized.
Below are some of the effective strategies organizations should have in place:
Zero Trust Approaches
An important stance for companies to take when operating with disconnected teams in a cloud environment is to adopt a Zero Trust approach. Zero Trust expands on the concept of “never trust, always verify.” This methodology, when put into practice, ensures that no matter what type of role is assigned to specific system users, all forms of access need to be authenticated and authorized.
There are many safety benefits when applying this methodology, especially as employees come and go from an organization. In the event that an employee leaves the organization or switches departments, their level of access won’t automatically go to the next person in line.
This can be critical to helping reduce the likelihood of successful attempts from malicious actors to copy used credentials and gain access to networked databases or systems.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Another challenge businesses face as they rely more on cloud services is the repeating of passwords or other login credentials. In the event that credentials are compromised in one system, attackers can easily open the door to other critical services.
An effective way to help avoid this from happening and to strengthen the first line of defense against cyber attackers is to implement MFA (Multi-factor Authentication) into all of your connected services that require user access. This adds an additional layer of protection that is very hard to falsify since it requires the use of a hardware token or fingerprint scan to verify access allowance.
MFA tools and solutions are also beneficial as they can track the activity of various users to help identify if and when network activity seems out of the ordinary. This could be attempting to access an account from a strange IP address or failing verification protocols multiple times.
Comprehensive Endpoint Security
A hard reality for many businesses to understand is that your security readiness is highly dynamic. This is especially the case for organizations that have already put time and resources into establishing safe security practices but have now shifted their structure to support remote working employees.
When the virtual boundaries of a working environment are extended, it’s important to implement a comprehensive strategy for tackling endpoint security. This means that each and every device (whether company-owned or personal) that is used to connect to company resources needs to be accounted for and monitored.
Organizations should establish a detailed BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy for employees who are allowed to use personal devices to complete their work. This will help ensure that, whether or not the company owns the device, employees are still required to use it in accordance with safe security practices for the business.
When organizations provide company-owned devices to their employees to use out of the office, they will have more control over how those devices are protected. This can and should include using a centrally managed endpoint protection platform that allows for remote monitoring and control of devices to help limit or completely mitigate the risk of someone outside the organization using their hardware and company access for malicious purposes.
Employee Awareness Training
It doesn’t matter how robust an organization’s security protocols are – if their employees lack the necessary training they need to actively identify and avoid cybersecurity threats, the chances of a successful breach are considerably high.
The human element is one of the weakest links in a business’s cybersecurity readiness. Cyber attackers thrive on complacency or ignorance when it comes to individuals visiting dangerous websites or opening malicious emails without vetting them first.
The tactics being used today to compromise business security are highly sophisticated and effective, and businesses need to prioritize adequate training and awareness for their employees on all things cybersecurity-related.
When training their employees, organizations should focus on topics like phishing scams and password management, as well as best practices associated with using private networks as opposed to public Wi-Fi when connecting to company resources.
Following Industry-Specific Standards
Considering how fast-moving cybersecurity best practices are, it can be difficult for businesses to know where and when they should focus their security resources. Thankfully, there are a number of proven security frameworks and benchmarks in place that organizations can use to help make sure their processes and security measures are up-to-date with current standards.
SOC (Service Organization Control) audits are an example of an internal framework organizations can use to verify whether or not their operating procedures and controls are impactful enough to withstand modern-day security threats. Businesses can benchmark their own business against multiple trust service categories, ensuring they’re able to meet the security readiness that their customers and regulatory entities require.
In industries where compliance laws are heavily enforced, certification programs like HITRUST (Health Information Trust Alliance) can help businesses stay in alignment with the required security, privacy, and risk management standards. While achieving these certifications is a great way to test a business’s readiness for security measures, it also proves to customers and clients the importance placed on their data privacy and control.
Incident Response Planning
Even if you’ve invested in the right tools and solutions and your employees are well-trained in spotting and avoiding potential security threats, there is no guarantee that a security breach won’t still take place. This is why it’s critical to have an effective incident response plan in place ahead of time.
Your incident response plan should have all of the information you need to respond to a major breach while identifying all of the relevant stakeholders who will be involved in the response strategy. You’ll also want to make sure the necessary communication protocols of each member of the team are clearly outlined – both for internal team members and any third parties that may be involved.
While taking the time to create an incident response plan is crucial, making sure it stays regularly updated over time is also important. This ensures that as your organization scales and the supporting infrastructure that goes along with it, you’ll have relevant plans in place that reflect the changes the company has undergone over the years.
Regular Security Audits and Vulnerability Testing
It can be incredibly valuable to your organization to get an outside perspective when it comes to the effectiveness of your security planning. Conducting regular audits and organizing vulnerability testing of your critical systems can be a great way to do this.
Internally, organizations can orchestrate red and blue team sessions where one team of security professionals works towards gaining unauthorized entry into certain systems while other teams work to defend them. Hiring penetration testing services from outside the organization is another great way to gain insight into previously undiscovered vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cyber attackers.
When conducting these security assessments, it’s important to put in place a regular schedule of audits and the benchmarks associated with them to ensure the organization is continuously improving on all areas of its security.
Keep Your Business Secure Regardless of Where Your Employees Work
Choosing to support a hybrid workforce can offer a variety of benefits to organizations as they scale their operations. However, it’s important for businesses to recognize the unique risks they face in these environments when it comes to keeping their systems secure.
By applying the strategies discussed and focusing on continuous improvement in both security hardening and employee awareness, businesses can ensure the integrity of their systems while keeping their clients and their own data secure.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nazy Fouladirad is President and COO of Tevora, a global leading cybersecurity consultancy. She has dedicated her career to creating a more secure business and online environment for organizations across the country and world. She is passionate about serving her community and acts as a board member for a local nonprofit organization.
