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Business Traveler

July/August 2020

Working remotely makes cybersecurity more critical than ever

Mobile devices and technology have virtually saturated our everyday lives as general consumers. Sure, we all probably have that one friend who still uses a flip phone just to cooly be ironic, but most of us find our lives inextricably intertwined with our mobile devices.

As the wave of the novel coronavirus washed over the world’s economies, business travel slowed to a trickle, leaving companies scrambling to find ways to survive in the midst of a flagging global economy. Only now are we seeing some signs of life returning, slowly and in fits and starts, grounding business travelers who would normally be hitting the road, leaving them to plug into work-from-home schemes instead.

Fortunately, over the past several decades developments in connectivity and computing solutions have become more widespread. And since the capabilities have been there for some time, a significant and growing proportion of the workforce is already on board with this mode of work.

However there can be a dark side to work-at-home; as the numbers surge, it opens the door to cyber risks that may be well controlled by a large company’s IT security measures, but not in a vulnerable home office environment.

The latest headline-making example is so-called ‘zoom bombing,’ a word play on the ever-popular prank of photobombing (except a lot worse) combined with the name Zoom, the free video conferencing software – although any video conference can be hijacked, regardless of platform. The interruptions often take the form of the unwanted participants posting lewd or offensive content.