Having rushed to keep the remote lights on in the early stages of lockdown,ย organisationsย must now change their focus to mitigating a plethora of risks emerging out of the pandemic chaos.ย ย
By Paulย Grapendaal, Head of Managed Services,ย Ncloseย
With little time to prepare for it, many localย organisationsย entered lockdown hurriedly trying to enable employees who left their offices carrying desktops and servers. In the early stages of lockdown,ย organisationsย were primarily focused on โputting out firesโ and keeping business running. Security concerns were eclipsed by the need to simply activate home offices.โฏ But unfortunately, there are a lot of people looking toย capitaliseย on this level of chaos, and they will typically be moreย organisedย than those battling to adapt to the new normal. Taking advantage of the cybersecurity risk gap, threats could increase dramatically, putting defensive capabilities under pressure to stay ahead.โฏย
There are myriad risks facingย organisationsย that are particularly vulnerable right now โย phishing,โฏ whaling, fraud and data loss. In the rush to set up remote workforces,ย organisationsย may have lost track of who has what devices and data, and what they are able to access on the corporate network. Around the world, business leaders were served a rude wake-up call on the precariousness of ecosystems, and the need for solid digital and cyber security environments to keep business running.ย
Weeks into lockdown,ย organisationsย started changing tack to review the security measures and architectures underpinning the remote workforce. Without the luxury of on-premise pilots and ample time, they will have to move quickly to gain full visibility of their environments and mitigate risk across a dispersed network.โฏย
Now more than ever before, it has become crucial to introduce aย zero trustย approach, secure and encrypt, and to know what data you have, where it is, and whoย is able toย access it. It is vital to โover communicateโ with employees, alerting them to risks and reminding them that you may not be able to protect them as effectively as you can in the office.ย
As the possibility emerges that remote work could be the new normal for some time to come, many South Africanย organisationsย are likely to be forced to cut costs, which may drive them to consolidate best-of-breed solutions or compromise on the quality of solutions to achieve savings. They may be forced to lay off highly skilled staff and reduce their physical office environments. These moves may leave them even more vulnerable to cyber criminals.ย
The move to cloud based or hybrid solutions will accelerate as these solutions give business the ability and agility to scale rapidly if required. These cloud-based solutions give a degree of control and visibility that legacy technologies are not able to. However, one can only manage what one can see, so in order to better understand their risks and enable them to pivot based on changing trends, businesses will rely on the visibility that SIEM/SOC/MDR services can provide.โฏโฏย
To mitigate risk as they move into the post-COVID environment, business will have to draw on its recently improved relationship with security and collaborate even more closely than before.ย Organisationsย will have to identify its most business critical resources, evaluate how to protect them, and determine whether they are adequately protected for the amount they are spending. For many, mitigating risk in the new normal will involve changing methodologies and investing in new technologies. โฏย
In these uncertain times,ย organisationsย should find security partners they can trust, who will take the time to understand their business, assess their entire risk profile and work with them to mitigate theย most significant risks. Partners such asย Ncloseย are now taking on the responsibility of helpingย clientsโฏ identifyย and mitigate their risks, assisting them inย optimisingย the technologies they have in-house to get more value from their solutions.ย