Remote work: love it or hate it, it is here to stay. The global remote workforce as grown more prominent in recent years, presenting a range of unique security challenges.

Rom Carmel, Co-Founder and CEO at Apono, states, “It brings a lot of complexities — specifically complexities when it comes to security — some of which were brought before the move to remote work but accelerated with the move.”

As the remote workforce movement becomes more and more commonplace, security leaders must adapt to the new security difficulties this workforce will bring.

Security complexities of a remote workforce

Any workforce, remote or otherwise, will present its own security challenges. One particular challenge that remote workforces face is the extensive perimeter that must be secured.

“An on-premises environment — like what most organizations used to have — could have a fence put around it to say, ‘Now nothing leaves or enters here,’” Carmel explains. “But with increased migration to cloud, less and less organizations have that kind of environment anymore. When an organization moves to the cloud, it moves to no longer store its data on-premises. With this shift to a global remote workforce, users themselves are logging in, and not from the organization itself. And that poses even newer security challenges.”

When employees work from home, there is no longer one single area that needs to be secured. While this challenge was introduced prior to the growth of the remote workforce via cloud technology, the growing remote workforce accelerated this challenge.

Carmel elaborates on these challenges, saying, “Now you have users that are out of the premise, out of the secure environment, and out of your physical organization — and physical network. So what they're connecting to, the data that they're leveraging, and the compute that they're using is also now outside of the organization's premise and network as well.” 

Security leaders responsible for the safety of a remote workforce must take these challenges into consideration when deciding how to best secure their workers.

Authentication challenges

“From a security perspective, the remote workforce imposes a lot of a lot of complexities,” Carmel asserts. “For instance, we need to constantly authenticate the person that is now logging in, because this computer can be used by someone else that we don't know since we're not seeing who's sitting on the other side of that computer. We also have to consider what type of access and permissions these users are being granted inside of data repositories and applications external to the organization.”

 With this shift to a global remote workforce, users themselves are logging in, and not from the organization itself. And that poses even newer security challenges.

Authentication challenges are at the core of remote workforce security threats. Determining whether or not a user is who they claim to be is one of the first lines of defense for an organization with employees spread across the globe.

“The authentication and authorization of these employees working remotely is a big challenge. How do we verify that person is really that person?” Carmel says. “For instance, if an employee’s computer was to get stolen and they’re working remotely, or if their identity was compromised due to a phishing attempt in the organization, that would be a security risk. Authorization is how to make sure that person you know has only the access that they need to be able to reduce the attack surface.”

The importance of proper authentication for a remote workforce cannot be understated. Therefore, security leaders must take the necessary steps to bolster authentication measures.

When considering ways to mitigate these risks, Carmel remarks, “I think it comes to combination of processes and tools. It's not enough to bring in solutions that that are not being implemented, and it's not enough to bring in solutions when there is no security mindset in the organization. So that's why it's a combination.”

When considering authentication security tools, security leaders must take a step back and consider the holistic needs of their organization.

“When we're talking about what type of tools need to be brought in, security leaders need to think about the different layers of how remote workforces are connecting to in order to work,” Carmel says. “There are layers of identity verification and authorization for connecting users, so security leaders should consider tools for the network access itself. Remote workforces need tools that verify identities and only allow access to applications and services that are within the scope of that user’s required tasks.”

Fostering a culture of security in the remote workforce

As remote work becomes more prominent, malicious actors may seek to exploit that growing workforce.

“It is essential to make sure that the people in your company are familiar with security threats that leverage the fact that people are working remotely,” Carmel says.

When managing a workforce that is spread across the globe, it can be difficult to cultivate a strong company culture of security. However, fostering a security culture in the remote workforce is not impossible.

One way security leaders can implement a culture of security is through constant communication. Whether via email, internal newsletters or business messaging apps, security leaders can share security tips and threats on a regular basis. That way, when a remote employee confronts a security threat, they will be more likely to recognize it for what it is.

“A culture of security stems from awareness,” Carmel states. “Security leaders need to get the organization's employees to be aware that this is happening.”