Cybersecurity in a Season of Remote Work

Everything is Happening Inside the Home

Entire industries have fully or partially transitioned to having their employees work from home. The list of people inside of households expands further when you include children and young adults whose schools and colleges have been canceled. Even a cursory glance of any social media platform will yield pages of Zoom memes. It seems as though everything is now happening inside the home.

Remote Work has Led to Increased Cyber Threats

What many have not considered, is that threat actors (i.e. hackers) are using this season of remote work to ramp up their attacks. Since businesses have had to switch over to remote workforces, the level of attacks has increased in both frequency and repetition. 

The question is why? Why have attacks become more prevalent now? The reason behind this uptick is that with most businesses and networks there is no visibility – there is no control and threat actors know this. 

Right now, businesses are vulnerable.

Vigilant’s Approach to Cybersecurity 

Conectrix has had the opportunity to receive insightful information from Vigilant concerning cybersecurity and remote work. If anyone were an authority on this subject, it would be Vigilant. To understand what separates Vigilant from everyone else in their industry is to understand that Vigilant’s approach to cybersecurity is leagues above the rest. Whether it is their Managed Endpoint Protection or their CyberDNA, Vigilant’s knowledge and methods are elite. 

Control and Visibility  

This season of remote work has created a scenario for many businesses where they have zero control over their systems, zero control over the actions of their employees, and zero visibility of their employees’ actions. When it comes to cybersecurity, visibility is the priority.

Control is secondary – control can be built from visibility – but in this season of remote work businesses have neither. 

Wrongly, a lot of companies will assume that because “everything is in the cloud” they are safe. The problem, however, is that it is endpoints that truly matter. If one doesn’t control their endpoints or have visibility of their endpoints, they’re in serious trouble. 

The Importance of Split Tunneling for a Remote Workforce 

If a business is operating with any level of remote connectivity, it should always be operating on a single tunnel. This may be frustrating for remote employees because they will no longer be able to connect to local printers at home, their internet traffic goes across the business’ network, and their bandwidth gets eaten up.

Nevertheless, these are mere annoyances compared to the disaster of a compromised system. 

With a remote workforce using a single tunnel, a business will be able to tell if a user has been hacked before they reconnect back to their network. Vigilant for instance, can use their Managed Endpoint Solution to quickly detect if an employee’s system has been compromised and lock it down before it infects the entire network. 

The Two Most Prevalent Attacks used Against Remote Workers 

Vigilant has noticed an increase in both phishing schemes and watering hole attacks since businesses transitioned to remote workforces.

Phishing is a method of trying to gather personal information, business-critical information or even money by using deceptive emails and websites. These can be comedically obvious but sometimes they are more clandestinely concealed. 

A watering hole attack is exactly what it sounds like. Like a crocodile lurking below the water’s surface, hackers will ambush unsuspecting victims by injecting malicious code into vulnerable websites. 

For employees at home, hackers know lots of kids go to Minecraft.net. By using a watering hole attack, hostile actors can easily gain entry to an employee’s child’s machine, and from there get on a business’s network and have access to all of the data. 

Phishing and watering hole attacks work better against a remote workforce because threat actors know that businesses have no visibility and control. These bad actors can easily deploy their malicious scripts and hold a business hostage. 

Conclusion

Businesses should always put visibility and control as their highest priorities when dealing with cyber threats. Regardless of your workforce being remote or in the office, Vigilant has the tools and capabilities to bolster your business’ defenses. 

If you have more questions about cybersecurity or other technologies that can connect your remote workforce, reach out to Conectrix and we can find the right fit to meet your business’ objectives.