ThinkTWENTY20

"The unfortunate spread of COVID-19 is forcing many employees around the world to work remotely," says Bret Hartman, vice president and CTO of Cisco Security Business Group. "While necessary, this new level of workplace flexibility is putting a sudden strain on IT and security teams, specifically around the capacity of existing protections in place given surge in demand." 

Growing numbers of companies are asking or requiring employees to work from home. While many companies have encouraged employees to work from home in recent years, many more have not. Working from home calls for remote working policies to maintain an adequate level of security and protection from cyber attacks.

High on the list of challenges is the question of what devices are to be used from home. Some employees will use their own computers and they likely will not be set up with proper safeguards. IT people will have to configure them. But it may run deeper than that. If a company has not encouraged remote working previously it probably has not established secure connections to its servers that the employees can use. These will be needed to enable many of the employees to do their work. They may have to be set up on a crash basis – never good.

In addition, homes have been setting up a variety of systems for various devices, such as security alarms and cameras, treadmills, refrigerators with little regard for proper security. Use of computers on home networks to access corporate networks is rife with risk.

Companies such as Cisco have been running hard to try and provide the support needed to implement work-at-home policies quickly. A daunting challenge.