Mitigating Cyber Risks in a Remote Work Environment

Mitigating Cyber Risks: A Remote Worker's Guide

Cybersecurity is an effort of continuous vigilance. The threats are always changing, with emerging technologies we’re working to fully understand, and more interconnection between (and dependence on) shared resources than ever before.  

And with bigger-ticket ransomware payouts year-after-year, the incentives for criminals just keep growing. In 2023, nearly half of the nation reported being victims of identity theft, according to Forbes, and 2024 has already seen a staggering parade of breaches and ransomware attacks.  

Meanwhile, remote work has grown in parallel. Since necessary adjustments for Covid-19, a large percentage of the global workforce has remained remote, especially in technology. There are trade-offs here, of course. As reported by Forbes, 69% of remote workers indicate increased burnout from their greater dependence on digital tools, with 53% having a harder time connecting with coworkers, as you might expect.  

Still, with 71% finding remote work helps with life-work balance, and a surprising 98% of workers surveyed wanting to work remote at least some of the time, it is here to stay. 

Sadly, there can also be no doubt that remote work, much like traveling workers and distributed teams from the past, exposes companies to greater risks from cybercrime.  

So how do we manage these two things together? 

Remote Cyber Risks Explored 

The most obvious (and common) threat posed by workers connecting to companies from offsite comes from variability.   

Collectively described as expanded attack surfaces, this, as in national defense, refers to the truism that larger a front is, the harder it is to protect. The same is true with securing an offsite workforce.  

With onsite, more workers exclusively use company-provided hardware, on a company-provided intranet. They are typically surrounded by co-workers where the same is true, and under direct supervision that may include IT. 

Yet even with an onsite model, outside devices come in, and workers connect to hotspots or networks that are outside your company’s firewall (also after hours or on breaks, at home or while traveling).  

Remote workers may or may not use company-provided hardware, but the bottom line is your direct oversight, away from the eyes of IT teams, is heavily diminished. And regardless of devices, they most certainly utilize their personal networks to make necessary connections.  

Also, remote workers are highly likely to work in varied locations to be around other remote workers, as Jasson Casey, CEO of Beyond Identity, told Bryan Robinson of Forbes: 

 “-the results of our study show that some of the most popular ways for remote workers to get out of the house also proved to be the most dangerous. Co-working spaces, coffee shops and libraries showed the highest percentages of remote workers getting their data stolen.” 

When using public internet connections, working in public spaces or uncontrolled third-party locations, this exposed surface widens even further. 

Within this framework, data handling security also becomes far more difficult. Maintaining effective data oversight can be especially tricky for organizations, such as in healthcare or banking, who manage sensitive and regulated data, and without question those protections are also harder to enforce outside of a traditional office environment.  

Aside from questions of inappropriately downloading or transferring data (which should still be traceable), remote work increases vulnerability to scams which can expose this data, and it’s impossible to know what eyes may have accesses to screens, nor where workers may take the data, which can violate region-based policies.  

With increased dependence on digital communication channels, phishing and other social engineering scams, the most common vector for cybercrime, are a much greater risk than for onsite workers. Aside from having to use devices to constantly communicate (making false substitutes easier to slip in), remote workers may also be more susceptible to distraction, with greater freedom to utilize alternate technologies, or by being engaged by others outside of the workforce.  

This makes education and increased awareness even more important.  

If you do provide your remote workers with all the hardware they need (as onsite), there is still a lack of physical control on external devices, which may be used by non-workers, or have inputs such as USB or external ports which may more easily introduce threats, intentionally or accidentally.  

Keeping all of this controlled and updated requires additional work from IT teams, but it is not impossible. 

Best Practices to Secure a Distributed Workforce 

This may all sound quite daunting, but with greater awareness, preparation, and oversight, we can vastly reduce the cyber risks in remote work.   

I recommend these remote work security best practices: 

• Password management training and more: Training is one of our best defensive weapons, and that begins with something as seemingly trivial as passwords. In addition to requiring sufficient length and complexity, regular updates must be enforced which do not allow repeats. It must also be stressed that passwords cannot be shared among logins, nor written down where they are accessible. Using a password manager can be effective, but browser functionality to save passwords is best disabled. This can all be part of a positive/team-based culture around collective security.  

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): I’ve covered MFA at length in a prior Substack post, but I cannot stress enough the importance of requiring an additional means of authentication. Again and again we see cyber attacks hit organizations which are not using MFA, and it is a key component of effective cybersecurity for remote employees. 

• Network security for remote work: Virtual private networks (VPN) are essential, and ideally our employees should use a company VPN, to route traffic through our own organization’s security. But this alone is not enough. Remote workers should also employ a firewall, monitoring network traffic and blocking unapproved entry. A zero-trust approach, wherein you never assume someone logged into your system has a right to be there, is key. User behavior analytics (UBA) can chart the behavior of your remote workers, so you can better identify abnormal activities and movement. 

• Cloud best practices: This is another area I’ve covered previously, as it is essential to security overall. Once again, access controls and encryption are key, along with regular review and update of configurations, and active monitoring. Data loss prevention (DLP) tools should also be employed which monitor and analyze for security issues, and in some cases help stop them from occurring in the first place. 

• Hardware: Webcam hacking can expose employee, as well as organizational, privacy to outsiders, and with video calls central to remote work, this form of cybercrime is increasingly common and easy to enact. Educating employees here is essential, but so is proper updating and monitoring of off-site hardware. Encrypting on-device data, secure access controls, and scanning for malware are all essential for remote worker hardware, which should always be scanned before connecting to a company network. As always, maintain updates and patches ASAP, which are reverse-engineered by cyber criminals to attack lagging IT departments.  

An effective, clear, and well distributed remote work cybersecurity policy can be a surprisingly effective tool for managing all of this, as well as generally mitigating cyber risks in remote work.  

This must be readily available, actionable, and include (or connect to) practical guidance for your strategy, such as remote work data protection, chat software security, password management best practices, phishing and other social engineering policies and steps to take when attacked, and clear communication of privacy rights to enable security monitoring and regular audits.  

Unannounced, regular tests (such as by launching your own social engineering scams) can greatly improve overall education, by putting policy into action. 

Effective policy is a key for having a positive security culture at your organization, which invites everyone to participate in collective defense, offering incentives, not merely penalties and stoked fears.  

Last but not least, this policy, like all aspects of your cyber threat prevention for remote work, must be regularly evaluated, updated, and improved, as continuously as possible. 

Conclusion 

For at least for some part of a company’s workforce, remote work is likely here to stay, but so, too, are near-continuous cyberattacks. 

But with proper consideration, investment, oversight, and education, remote workers don’t need to be the breach in your company’s defenses.  

As in all areas of tech, staying up to date is absolutely essential, and this is critical for your remote work cybersecurity. The PTP Report regularly publishes updates on cybersecurity, including our bi-monthly roundups, to help with this.  

Take advantage of it, and other sources, to help keep up your guard against cybercrime.