Four Tips to Secure the Hybrid Workplace of the Future
There’s no question that the hybrid office is the future of work. One study finds that more than eight in ten UK firms are planning on a hybrid office after the pandemic; only about 16% of companies are expected to require workers to return to the office full-time.
While workers may rejoice at this flexibility (and the UK economy could even see a boost as well), the transformation also has a unique set of challenges, including security. Remote and home offices present a notorious risk of intrusion, from how workers connect with others to the tools and devices they use as well as the technology behaviours they adopt in their everyday activities. According to government sources, four in ten businesses reported a security breach in the last year.
With cybercrime on the rise, it's imperative that your organisation is properly set up for this future of hybrid work. It won’t be easy for today’s technology leaders: traditional methods for securing on-premise data centres no longer provide the security and flexibility required by the hybrid office. You and your team will need to master the essential elements of a secure hybrid work environment, including: understanding traffic patterns, controlling access, and creating the right security policies and mitigation controls.
To accommodate the hybrid office, many organisations are moving toward cloud-based services. In this post, we share four recommendations to consider when securing your burgeoning hybrid environment, including zero trust access, endpoint security, secure SD-WAN, and backup and recovery.
Restrict Access with Zero Trust
As humans, the concept of trust forms a foundation of connection with others. Yet, there are times when we should demonstrate zero trust. The security of your hybrid working environment is one of those times. Zero Trust is not a specific technology or tool. Rather, it’s a modernised paradigm for cybersecurity: unlike traditional models, Zero Trust assumes that every user, network, and device is compromised and thus, every user, network, or device presents a risk.
With a Zero Trust security model, all users on all devices must first prove their authenticity before accessing the system. Doing so adds an additional and robust level of verification for all people, devices, and interactions—both outside and inside your network. While it can be complex to implement an effective Zero Trust security model for the first time, we here at Optec can help you navigate the entire process for a customised and scalable solution.
Properly Protect your Endpoints
A hybrid environment means that people will be working from the office, from home, and from other remote and changeable locations, like libraries, cafes, and whilst traveling. This means that more and more, people will be working from a range of devices, like mobile phones, laptops, and tablets. At the same time, these endpoint devices remain a main access point for attackers. One survey found that a whopping 70% of UK businesses reported that they can’t ensure every endpoint device has the same level of protection.
Robust and up-to-date endpoint security is crucial to keep these myriad devices protected; it’s also a critical component of your overall hybrid office security strategy. Companies of all sizes should prepare and practice the right endpoint security to counter the additional risks these devices bring to your continued operations. We recommend prioritising the identification of all unknown devices that join your network, to determine ownership and ensure the proper security posture for these devices. However, that is just a starting place.
Power Greater Flexibility with Secure SD-WAN
Another critical component of your hybrid office cybersecurity strategy is secure SD-WAN. Secure SD-WAN is a software-defined approach to managing your network. Essentially, it uses centralised consoles to control all of your network application flows, policies, security mechanisms, and general administration. SD-WAN is a fast, scalable, and flexible solution to support not only innovation within your hybrid office but also top-notch data security. By bringing together optimal network and security performance into an integrated solution, SD-WAN can power greater productivity, connectivity, and security across all of your work locations.
Put a Backup Plan in Place
No matter how much security you build into your hybrid office environment, the single best defence against intrusion is a solid backup and disaster recovery solution. Imagine one of your systems is down because of a cyberattack or adverse event. In most cases, while it's a significant pain, you can recover and reboot your system because your data is backed up and accessible. Having a copy of your data allows you to recover from data loss caused by hardware or software failures, malicious cyberattacks, and accidental data deletion.
Adding Backup-as-a-Service and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service will ensure that you're not at risk of data loss and can get up and running quickly in case of a failure or attack. At Optec, we partner with Assured Data Protection to bring you best-in-class solutions from Rubrik, which encompasses backup, instant recovery, replication, search, analytics, archival , compliance, and copy data management, all securely in the data centre and cloud.
The hybrid office is here to stay. Are you ready for it? Will your people and your data remain secure?
As a Fortinet Expert Partner, this is exactly where our expert team at Optec can help—from establishing a Zero Trust security model and improved endpoint security to designing an optimal Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution along with a custom back-up and recovery solution. Together, we can help you define and debut a flexible and secure hybrid environment that will keep your data safe, your reputation intact, and your employees connected and productive.
To learn more, please get in touch with us at 01280 878597 or sales@optec.co.uk.
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