Intelligent CISO Issue 31 | Page 33

PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE

Reinventing security

postures in the COVID work from home era

A report by Sectigo looks at how companies have modified their cybersecurity , compliance and digital identity practices for our suddenly evolved workspaces . Tim Callan , Senior Fellow , Sectigo , explains how working from home has changed the cybersecurity landscape .
OVID-19 and the ‘ new

C business normal ’ has transformed enterprise IT and cybersecurity practices more than any other event in the last decade .

Until very recently , many IT departments could rely on the fact that employees were primarily accessing sensitive data and systems from company-controlled computers using bespoke network access points like on-premises Wi- Fi . But the global pandemic forced IT workers to work from home almost instantly , necessitating the immediate setup of secure remote access to systems and data for a previously unimagined number of people .
This massive shift to work from home ( WFH ) has forced companies to examine and often update how they control and monitor access for remote workers and devices . To assess this changing security landscape , Sectigo carried out the 2020 Work from Home IT Impact Study , which looks at how companies have modified their cybersecurity , compliance and digital identity practices for our suddenly evolved workspaces . The survey , conducted by Wakefield Research , polled 500 IT professionals at companies with at least 1,000 employees in the UK , US , Canada , Germany , France and Ireland . The sample included a statistically significant number of UKbased IT professionals , which gives us the opportunity to zero-in on effects in the United Kingdom .
Though the transition was stressful for many companies , the research shows that the sudden wave of remote workers actually strengthened employee productivity and overall IT security for the long term , setting companies up for increased remote work in the future .
Positive effects on productivity
We all know the sole driver for widescale WFH was to keep employees productive while protecting them from the spread of COVID-19 . Nonetheless , the data shows that this change drove significant enhancements to companies ’ overall performance . Though nearly two-thirds ( 62 %) of companies did not start out with the ability to enable ubiquitous employee WFH , 62 % www . intelligentciso . com | Issue 31
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