In a conversation with a client CIO, they talked about how, due to the COVID19 epidemic, they needed to provide many employees the ability to work from home in a matter of days. Everything was done on the fly of course, without the appropriate network/resource segmentation, duty segregation, logging and monitoring, etc. I suggested that in order to protect the network from rogue remote endpoints, they in
crease endpoint security. With obvious budget issues and difficulties in reaching the endpoints at each teleworker’s home, I suggested Cyber2.0 which is deployable via a shared link sent to each user. The CIO talked with them and will start implementation in the next few days.
Not an hour goes by and another industrial company receives a report on malware infections on their deployed endpoint. As it turns out, EVERY endpoint working remotely for the past weeks had multiple malicious processes running. Some critical. The company was obviously alerted to the infected files and will be dealing with the infections remotely with the help of Cyber2.0 support.
Although one might argue that the infections were caused due to the endpoints working remotely, the fact is that the infections were detected, contained and are soon to be removed. Also, if these laptops ever get connected back to the local network, the company IT policy will be enforced as a prerequisite to working in the network, therefore, making the network even safer and more secure.
If anything, this emphasizes the fact that cyberattacks are real and the risk increases greatly with the move to teleworking.
Opposing the increased risk are many solutions that are available at discount for the time of the COVID19 crisis.
I guess there’s a silver lining here after all…