The Way You Work Has Changed…Has Your Technology?  

While a hybrid workplace is a necessary shift to meet the changing needs of the modern workforce, it can also create costly security vulnerabilities.   

The most significant change organizations have experienced since pre-pandemic is that their information is now predominantly in the cloud rather than inside a firewall-protected physical office or data center.  

With data moving to the cloud and increased remote work, small businesses now have more mobile devices and employees are working from more locations. While that’s good news for employees who can access this data wherever they choose to work, it also means you have more points of risk to think about.  

As teams work both remotely and in the office, the boundaries between work and home begin to blur. The reality is that some team members will also use home devices and networks for work purposes, which doubles the number of endpoints that malicious actors can attack.    

Personal devices are more likely to be lost and may have minimal security installed—or worse, none at all. Plus, phishing, ransomware, and social engineering attacks have become more sophisticated and harder than ever before to recognize.  

Organizations believe that if they invest in the right technology, their business and data will always be protected. However, the platforms you use will only work as well as your team has been trained to use them.   

Conducting training to change employee behavior, attitudes, and security habits is a necessary investment for all small businesses. This is more challenging in a hybrid workplace as “1 in 3 remote workers admit they feel overwhelmed by the need to keep track of all their account credentials, it is easy to see how apathy, short attention spans, and bad cyber habits are the true adversary of a secure network.”   

For hybrid workers especially, security and productivity must go hand-in-hand. If remote work security policies cause frustration and wasted time for employees, they will simply work around them.    

Without employee education and participation, even the most robust security methods aren’t useful or effective. Employees working from home or from shared spaces like coffee shops, airports, or libraries must be able to stay compliant with security policies without interrupting their workflows. Businesses that are serious about maintaining security when employees work both remotely and in the office must choose productivity software with built-in security with neither feature treated as an afterthought.