Home Offices Are Easy to Hack: 3 Keys for Security Pros

As workforces continue to work from home, there is a high likelihood that cyber attacks on organizations will increase. Security experts foresee scams and heightened attacks on home office infrastructures such as VPNs dominating the headlines in 2021. With the shift to long-term remote work strategies, remote worker security becomes one of the challenging priorities. Which IT security area should organizations prioritize when it applies to the remote workforce? In this post, Brandon Lee, Endpoint Security Management Strategist at Action1, says remote security is a tough KPI to crack, but security managers can start by focusing on core fundamental aspects. 

This year has driven the most significant paradigm shift for organizations the world over. With the COVID-19 global pandemic, organizations have transitioned to fully supporting remote workers wherever they may be with new processes, workflows, and technologies. As organizations shift to more long-term remote work strategies, fundamental objectives are coming back into clear focus.  

Among these essential business priorities is security. Organizations are reevaluating remote work security postures to ensure these are sufficient. 

Let’s take a look at the top three ways to ensure IT security for your remote workforce in 2021 and beyond.

Why is remote security essential for organizations to evaluate?  The fact is, attackers have their sights set on businesses.  They realize that as organizations quickly transitioned to a remote work environment, proper security protocols may have been neglected.

In the sudden transition to working remotely, many organizations were forced into the following:

• Allowing employees to make use of BYOD equipment
• Using company-issued laptops or other devices without an effective off-premises patch strategy
• No visibility or control over endpoint security, updates, patching
• No visibility to employee activities, including software inventories 
• Using legacy network connectivity such as VPN connections

Statistics show that cybercriminals are doing their best to take advantage of remote workers.  Note the following cybercrime statistics during the pandemicOpens a new window :

“The FBI recently reported that the number of complaints about cyberattacks to their Cyber Division is up to as many as 4,000 a day. That represents a 400% increase from what they were seeing pre-coronavirus. Interpol is also seeing an “alarming rate of cyberattacks aimed at major corporations, governments, and critical infrastructure.” These attacks are targeting all types of businesses but large corporations, governments, and critical medical organizations have been major targets.”

Aside from the sheer number of cyberattacks perpetrated, the size and scope of these attacks have 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 often much more valuable than a single individual’s data from a ransom standpoint. Businesses are much more likely to be in a position to pay the ransom demands of cybercrime gangs who leverage ransomware to lock and steal sensitive data. What is the cost to businesses?  

IBM’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach ReportOpens a new window 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.”

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.  

Learn More: Remote Learning Picks Up, So Do Ransomware Attacks: 6 Steps to Manage Risk

Top 3 Ways to Ensure IT Security for Your Remote Workforce

There are many facets to a proper security strategy that involve 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 of things, let’s look at the top 3 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 a huge issue facing organizations today.  In IBM’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach reportOpens a new window , stolen or compromised credentials were the most expensive cause of malicious data breaches.

“One in five companies (19%) that suffered a malicious data breach was infiltrated due to stolen or compromised credentials, increasing the average total cost of a breach for these companies by nearly $1 million to $4.77 million. Overall, malicious attacks registered as the most frequent root cause (52% of breaches in the study), versus human error (23%) or system glitches (25%), at an average total cost of $4.27 million.”   

Implementing MFA for end-users bolsters the overall security posture.  Using MFA for authentication combines something you know (your password) with something you have (smartphone, etc.).  With multi-factor authentication, 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.  It helps to 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.

According to SilentSectorOpens a new window :

“Since companies are operating remotely, effective patch management is now more important than ever. Cybercriminals will undoubtedly leverage the new disoriented workforce to exploit vulnerabilities. Patching current vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) is the most effective way to repair weaknesses before threat actors try to exploit them.”

Due to the rapid shift to the remote workforce, organizations that use traditional patch management systems with on-premises network connectivity requirements quickly found themselves in a challenging situation.  Using traditional on-premises patch management solutions like Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) assumes the client will have direct connectivity to the corporate network and Active Directory infrastructure.  With employees working remotely, this is now only possible with VPN connections.  VPN presents its own challenges in terms of security, scalability, and performance.  

Organizations can overcome the challenge of remotely patching endpoints by transitioning to cloud-based patch management systems that allow managing and installing patches from the cloud.

Learn More: Deep MFA: A Smarter Way to Protect Backups from Ransomware Attacks

3. Maintain Visibility

One of the most difficult challenges organizations face from a security standpoint with remote workers is maintaining visibility.  What kind of visibility is needed?  Organizations need to maintain a level of 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
• Unsanctioned cloud storage apps are not installed

Attackers or an unscrupulous remote employee could “fly under the radar” without the right visibility checks and alerting in place. Maintaining visibility on these and other areas helps ensure any security risks are remediated before they lead to a security breach.

Again, organizations will need to have the right technology tools to allow visibility to remote end-user clients located across any number of physical locations and networks. Traditional end-user client tools that require on-premises network connectivity are not effective with a highly distributed workforce.   

Learn More: Top 5 Tips for Safe Internet Browsing in 2021

Concluding Thoughts

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 ensure remote workers’ security and minimizes business-critical data risk.

By using cloud-based patch and security management platforms, organizations can effectively transition from traditional endpoint management to modern, cloud-based management. It will empower businesses to face the challenges of the future with confidence.

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