As the head of information security for a technology company with more than a thousand (now mostly-remote) employees, the COVID-19 pandemic has been — among other adjectives — an educational experience. And while it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing, I believe one of the reasons we were able to transition so quickly to remote work with relatively few hiccups is that we established practices to withstand precisely this type of scenario long before the virus swept through our community.
Though organizations have changed their IT environments to accommodate remote workers, 39 percent of respondents have not changed their security programs as a result of COVID-19, potentially exposing their organizations to cyber risks from new and more sophisticated attacks, reveals a new Crowdstrike report.
With telecommuting here to stay, now is the perfect time to re-examine just how much network access you are giving your users and machines. You might be shocked to see how open your network really is. Most organizations allow more access than their users or machines will ever need or should ever have – this excessive trust is what allows attackers who get into the network to spread and cause a lot of damage.
Organizations and their employees have always faced cyber vulnerabilities. However, with remote working, companies need to address the many layers of cybersecurity risks. The recent number of 'zoom bombing' incidents is a perfect example showing that the use of remote technologies at scale is causing new headaches and challenges for IT.
As a result of the pandemic, we are now tasked with redefining what physical security is, and the efforts that any type of organization and industry must make to ensure employees and consumers can avoid potential health threats and community spread.
Identity and access management (IAM) protects the business while keeping employees securely connected, but were organizations prepared for their employees to work from anywhere? LastPass ran a study with IT decision makers, in partnership with IDG, to discover the impacts of remote work to IAM and found that IAM is critical to securing a remote workforce, but almost all organizations have had to adjust their IAM strategy to securely enable employees to work from anywhere.
With security resources and budgets stretched thin to accommodate remote workforces, cybercriminals were quick to capitalize on the increased attack surface and general uncertainty, striking with a 667 percent increase in coronavirus-related cyberattacks.
The rapidly escalating challenges from the COVID-19 global outbreak present critical workforce issues for federal agencies to assess and address, says the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
With coronavirus crisis creating new opportunities for cybercriminals, 70 percent of organizations are seeing the value of increasing their investments in cybersecurity solutions.
Ten years ago, I helped create a national pandemic plan outlining how the U.K. would respond to a potential outbreak. While the exercise was largely theoretical, we are now seeing the need for these preparations in real time. Here are four key lessons from my time preparing for a pandemic.
