If your organization operates in a remote or hybrid work environment, you may be at risk for storage and data security attacks. Employees accessing the company network can cause network vulnerabilities that lead to cyberattacks and data breaches.
These cyberattacks and data breaches often damage networks leading to extended network downtime and the need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair the network.
For this reason, it is essential to understand the storage and data security risks associated with remote work and how to mitigate these risks by enhancing security and reducing the likelihood that they lead to cyberattacks and data breaches.
COEO understands the importance of reliable network security and has helped improve network security for thousands of organizations operating in a remote or hybrid work environment.
By the end of this article, you will understand the storage and data security risks caused by remote work and the ways to prevent them.
Storage and data security risks of the remote and hybrid work environment
Employee behavior is often regarded as the weakest link in data protection. Moving employees outside of the office in a remote or hybrid work environment can weaken that link even further. The storage and data security risks of remote work include:
Employees working on unsecured networks
While many offices do a good job of securing their network, when employees leave the office and take their work elsewhere, their devices may not be secure.
Most employees have secured their home WIFI. However, some have not, which exposes the network to potential attacks. Additionally, some employees use weak passwords or no passwords at all for their WIFI router.
While employees may have their home network secured, they often work in other remote locations as well. If your employee decides to work from a Starbucks, for example, they may be connected to an unsecured network.
In addition, security tools such as firewalls may not be reliable or even exist when working in remote locations. Home computers are also more likely to be infected by malware than systems operating behind the corporate firewall.
Blurred lines between home and workplace
In remote and hybrid work environments, the lines between home and workplace can become blurred.
More people are using their personal devices to do their jobs, including texting, emailing from their personal address, and online shopping from the same computer that processes confidential organizational data.
Even when employees are issued corporate devices for work tasks, employees are more likely to use their personal devices when working from home or at other remote locations.
Misuse of applications and services
One of the biggest risks with remote work is when employees use their own applications and services rather than the ones that are provided and sanctioned by their IT team.
Employees may believe that other applications and services help them perform their jobs better and are more efficient to use than ones that their IT department provides. For example, employees may use unsanctioned cloud platforms to store sensitive data.
Informal work habits
Employees working remotely may develop undisciplined work habits that create security vulnerabilities. For example, employees may download more files than needed at one time on an unsecured network or forget to upload or back up their data on a regular basis, leading to data security risks.
Additionally, employees may leave their devices unlocked in their residence with family members, roommates, or outside workers having access to documents and other information that they purposely or accidentally come across.
Hackers have more opportunities to carry out malicious behavior
With workers in remote locations, security teams have less visibility into the network, making it more difficult to catch employees or malicious actors stealing company data or intellectual property.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about the storage and data concerns in a remote work environment and how to prevent them, you can schedule an appointment.
How to prevent the storage and data security risks of remote work
Now you understand the storage and data security risks of remote work. However, it is also important to understand how to prevent these risks from leading to cyberattacks and data breaches. Some of the ways to prevent these security risks include:
Endpoint security protections
One way to prevent storage and data security risks in a remote work environment is to implement endpoint security protections. Endpoint security provides security on employee devices, ensuring reliable security no matter where employees work from.
Some examples of solutions that provide endpoint security include antivirus or antimalware software, as well as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR).
SASE solution
A SASE solution is a cybersecurity network that combines an SD-WAN solution with enhanced security.
Combining SD-WAN and enhanced security provides better network connectivity as well as network security in one cloud-based solution.
SASE identifies users and devices in the network and applies policy-based security rules, resulting in secure access to data regardless of where users are connecting from or what devices they are using.
Since SASE solutions are installed on the user's devices, they provide constant security across a network, no matter where the network is accessed.
This enables data to be delivered directly to a connection source instead of having to be sent to a data center to be monitored and inspected, resulting in less latency and faster network speeds.
Installing a SASE solution helps prevent storage and data security risks in a remote work environment.
Preventing storage and data security risks in your remote work environment
Now that you understand the storage and data security risks in a remote work environment and how to prevent them, it is also important to understand if these solutions are beneficial for your organization.
If your organization operates in a remote or hybrid work environment, it is important to maintain reliable storage and data security no matter where employees are working.
Without proper security in a remote or hybrid work environment, your network may be vulnerable to data breaches and cyberattacks.
For this reason, it is important to understand the security risks and the ways to prevent them so you can avoid cyberattacks and data breaches.
COEO understands how important network security is, especially in a remote or hybrid work environment, and has helped thousands of organizations improve security with solutions such as SASE and Endpoint Detection and Response.
We want you to understand the storage and data security concerns in a remote work environment and how to prevent them, so you can avoid them in your organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about the storage and data concerns in a remote work environment and how to prevent them, you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand the storage and data security concerns in a remote work environment and how to prevent them, check out this article to learn about the communication challenges with remote work:
