How Good Habits Secure Remote Work

Good habits have always been a key enabler of security in the organization, and they’re an essential part of your strategy to secure remote work.

With the hybrid workplace here to stay, your employees are not just working at home – they’re more mobile than ever, which means they’re connecting to your network infrastructure from many different locations. If you’re going to let staff work in an environment over which you have little to no control, you need to instill some good habits that enable secure remote work.

This is especially true if you’re going to permit your employees to work in public spaces, such as a park or a coffee shop. The argument could made that if you’re going to secure remote work effectively, you should put limits on what employees use as their workplace.

The most compelling reason is that they will use public, unsecured Wi-Fi, making them more likely to expose critical business information and even get hacked. Employees working in public spaces should only access corporate resources online through a virtual private network (VPN), even if they are working from home. Alternatively, they can use their smartphone as a hotspot rather than use public Wi-Fi.

The laptop employees use to work remotely must also be kept up to date so it’s able to handle the latest threats. You can’t secure remote work without anti-virus / malware protection software – any computer connecting to your network must have it, and it needs to be updated with the latest patches and virus definitions to protect against threat actors looking to exploit operating system and application vulnerabilities.

Just as you need to update your anti-virus software regularly, you need to update devices frequently – they should be rebooted often the latest software patches, firmware, and security fixes applied as soon as they are available. If the employee is working from home, you should make sure they’re updating their router regularly as well and any other devices on their home network.

Keeping hardware and software up to date is a habit that’s essential if you’re to secure remote work. Similarly, you must instill best practices when it comes to passwords management. Employees should understand the necessity of creating strong passwords that are unique to each login and account they use. Where possible, look at implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA). Adopting a Zero Trust approach can also help to secure remote work because it means employees are only accessing applications and data they need to.

Technology can only do so much to secure remote work – employee habits that foster good security hygiene are essential if you’re to support a hybrid workplace and mobile workers.

There are many ways artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning already impact cybersecurity. You can expect that trend to continue in 2024 – both as tools for data protection as well as a threat.

Balancing Cybersecurity Innovation Amid Evolving Threat Landscapes

Even as you implement AI and machine learning into your cybersecurity strategy through the adoption of tools like Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR), so are threat actors. They will continue to update and evolve their own methodologies and tools to compromise their targets by applying AI and machine learning to how they use ransomware, malware and deepfakes.

With small and medium-sized businesses just much at risk as their large enterprise counterparts, SMBs must take advantage of AI and machine learning as mush possible. AI-directed attacks are expected to rise in 2024 in the form of deepfake technologies that make phishing and impersonation more effective, as well as evolving ransomware and malware.

Deepfake social engineering techniques

Deepfake technologies that leverage AI are especially worrisome, as they can create fake content that spurs employees and organizations to work against their best interests. Hackers can use deepfakes to create massive changes with serious financial consequences, including altering stock prices.

Deepfake social engineering techniques will only improve with the use of AI, increasing the likelihood of data breaches through unauthorized access to systems and more authentic looking phishing messages that are more personalized, and hence, more effective.

Countering Cyber Threats and Harnessing Innovation in 2024

If hackers are keen on leveraging AI and machine learning to defeat your cybersecurity, you must be ready to combat them in equal measure – just as AI and machine learning will create new challenges in 2024, they can also help you bolster your cybersecurity. While regulations are being developed to foster ethical use of AI, threat actors are not likely to follow them.

AI will also affect your cyber insurance as your providers will use it to assess your resilience against cyberattacks and adjust your premium payments accordingly. AI presents an opportunity for you to improve your cybersecurity to keep those insurance costs under control.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of doom being predicted around the growing use of AI and machine learning. And while it does pose a risk to your organization and its sensitive data, you can use it to bolster your cybersecurity even as threat actors leverage AI to up the ante. A managed service provider with a focus on security can help you use AI and machine learning to protect your organization as we head into 2024.

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