NAVIGATING THE SECURITY LANDSCAPE IN THE NEW NORMAL

REGIONAL PRESALES DIRECTOR, MENA, RIVERBED, DISCUSSES WHY ORGANISATIONS NEED TO NOT ONLY THINK ABOUT HOW EMPLOYEES CAN SUCCESSFULLY COLLABORATE BUT ALSO HOW THEY CAN SAFELY DO SO AS THEY ADJUST TO THE ‘NEW NORMAL’ OF REMOTE WORKING.

- CHARBEL KHNEISSER

This mass shift to remote working in the wake of COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on the complexity of the security landscape. Traditionally, trust in business is established through face-toface interaction. However, when working from home and relying on collaboration tools, employees must now trust that the individuals they are dealing with are who they say they are without a robust way to validate identity. This, in addition to security steps being skipped such as consistently using a VPN as businesses prioritise uninterrupted workflows for employees, has drastically increased the attack surface for hackers and left businesses vulnerable.

As the landscape shifts, it is paramount that businesses evolve at the same pace and revise their security measures accordingly.

ESTABLISHING A NEW FORM OF TRUST

Collaboration tools have been vital in ensuring that businesses maintain efficient operations during lockdown. However, they have not come without their security risks, including unauthorised visitors hijacking company meetings. As such, these tools have raised new complexities for the security landscape, and it is now vital that employees need to take a different approach to trust when using them. Within a typical office environment, employees primarily establish the authenticity of one another through a face-to-face chain-of-trust principle.