per cent of staff were , or had , operated remotely during the lockdown .
The work from home mandate has saved many businesses from oblivion , but it has also opened the floodgates to new hacking vulnerabilities as companies rushed to implement new remote systems and provide their workforce with off-site access to networks .
The more devices are linked externally to a network , the greater the chances of a breach . The rise of personal devices used for work purposes has also altered the security landscape in 2020 , with some companies paying a stiff price for the attacks it has caused them .
Nikhil Chodankar , a senior security analyst at Prudential Services Asia , describes the cyberthreat situation as critical . He says , “ It is projected that by 2025 , there will be around 21 billion IoT devices . This means more devices will be interconnected bringing in more complexities and huge data to manage and analyse . This will create challenges for security professionals to understand the underlying technologies , how to secure IoT devices and the data it transmits . We have already seen POC where cars / airplanes systems have been hacked . IoT security will be a trend in the future .”
Companies need to observe strict protocols when considering workfrom-home implications to security , remarks Shenouda . “ There is a huge gap between having no security and going ‘ directly ’ on the internet from home , to being fully protected by VPN and other security tools that a multimillion-dollar company infrastructure can offer users ,” he says .
53 technologymagazine . com