There has been a lot of uncertainty due to the global pandemic that has affected all areas of life this year. Companies, individuals and families have had to make adjustments to adapt to the "new normal".
Of all the uncertainties, there is one thing we do know. As with many aspects of life, the future of work will never be the same. Companies are now having to think outside the box of a traditional local workforce. What does this mean?
The global pandemic has brought about changes that would never have happened otherwise.
Before long, organizations had to switch to a remote workforce and transition communication, application access and workflows to enable employees to work together effectively, despite being distributed across many different locations.
The pandemic has emphasized the extreme importance of being digitally ready to carry out essential business operations, regardless of the physical location of employees.
Organizations with little or no remote technology infrastructure have been hit hardest by the pandemic. But one of the positive outcomes of COVID-19 is that it has helped companies understand how they can do business more effectively and efficiently with technology.
Overall, this has made most companies more robust and resilient to future disruptions. What has enabled this change? The cloud.
The cloud revolution has enabled a shift in mentality where physical location, or even the device used to access critical business data, no longer matters.
Employees can be productive, effective and efficient, regardless of location. Companies can now carry out critical operations effectively in a virtual workplace using powerful cloud applications and platforms.
This involves the use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) environments, data storage, file sharing, mobility and access and video solutions incorporated into collaboration.
But what security challenges has this shift to the cloud and remote working caused? And how does this affect the future of work?
The critical role of security in the future of cloud-based work
As companies begin to rapidly switch to using cloud platforms to carry out business-critical processes, it can become a challenge to manage and prioritize security.
This year, many organizations have rapidly made the transition from traditional on-premise infrastructure management to SaaS and other cloud tools. Just look at Microsoft Teams, for example. According to statistics, this service grew to more than 75 million subscribers in April 2020, compared to 20 million subscribers in November 2019.
Given this change, what security challenges are organizations facing? Here are three major aspects to consider:
1. Employee audit
The cloud offers enormous mobility and easy access to data and services. However, this can be a major challenge. With the ability to access data from anywhere and on any device, it can be difficult to protect business-critical data and know who is accessing it.
Companies need to answer the following questions when it comes to cloud data:
- Where does access come from?
- Which IP addresses are accessing resources?
- Is the access coming from suspicious or abnormal geolocations?
- Which applications are accessing the environment?
- Are these apps sanctioned?
2. Protecting file sharing and data access
Along with effective employee auditing, ensuring secure file sharing and data access is crucial. Sharing data from cloud environments just got easier.
Sharing data outside the organization can happen inadvertently or intentionally. This can lead to the exposure of confidential information or a total data breach, either accidentally or on purpose.
When thinking about the future of work and taking advantage of cloud solutions, you must control and protect how users access files and share data outside the organization.
You also need visibility of who is accessing your data, from where and from which applications.
3. Ransomware
Ransomware is one of the most dangerous risks to your company's critical data. Attackers are using ransomware effectively to block business data. Moving to the cloud does not effectively protect your data from ransomware.
Attackers have even increased cyberattacks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cybersecurity experts have reported 4,000 attacks a day since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, representing an increase of 400%.
Ransomware can infect SaaS services in the cloud, such as file storage, as well as even email environments. As your company looks to the future of work, properly protecting business-critical data means protecting your organization from ransomware.
This requires the right incident response tools and disaster recovery solutions to automate the monitoring, detection and prevention of ransomware and launch a granular recovery of damaged data to reduce downtime.
How to Protect Cloud Resources
The future of work as we know it has certainly changed. The cloud is introducing new ways of doing business and enabling organizations to continue working effectively despite current and future challenges.
Along with leveraging cloud solutions for productivity, using an effective cloud security solution to meet the security challenges listed above is essential.
Organizations should look for cloud security solutions that take advantage of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to effectively protect cloud SaaS environments.
This means giving IT the ability to implement cloud security policies, allow / deny the use of cloud applications, identify connected devices, determine who or what has access to cloud data, understand where data is shared, provide ransomware protection, establish cloud-to-cloud backups, and more.
With the right cloud security solutions, the company can move more confidently to a digital-ready work environment using SaaS cloud solutions.
The future of work revolves around the effective use of cloud technologies to conduct business, no matter what challenges are on the horizon. Security plays a critical role in this future.
Contact the experts at Conversys now and find out about Aruba Networks' security, network management and connectivity solutions. We're on hand to help you overcome new challenges.
About Conversys
Conversys IT Solutions is a provider of Information and Communication Technology services and solutions operating throughout Brazil.
With a highly qualified technical and commercial team and a network of partners that includes the main global technology manufacturers, Conversys IT Solutions is able to deliver customized IT and Telecom Infrastructure solutions to clients.
We invest in our employees and partners and strive for a long-lasting relationship with our clients, because we believe that this is how we gain the skills and knowledge we need to innovate and generate value for the businesses in which we operate.
