The hidden dangers of working from home

Posted: March 31, 2020

A woman looks at her computer screen aghast - she has been hacked!

COVID-19 has thrown a spanner into the working arrangements of most professional services businesses and plenty of other industries too.

Suddenly, remote working arrangements have become the hot topic for the IT department, and organisations across the country are racing to catch-up.

Computers were already in some short supply as major chip maker Intel couldn’t keep up with resurgent demand for laptops over the last 2 years. When Coronavirus struck, lead times blew out by 6-10 weeks and are not yet recovered.

As a result, many employers are allowing their staff to use their own devices to access corporate networks, so that productivity can continue from home.

But the flexibility in allowing employees to do that opens up risks on a number of fronts.

Here are just a few examples:

Unpatched operating systems in employee devices may make them easier to compromise
Unauthorised applications in the local operating environment carry unknown weaknesses and can lead to user device compromise
Remote users find it harder to verify the source instructions to download, visit or open up links
Local users are often local administrators, meaning that a hacked device can be used to establish greater command and control services for the attacker.
Application Whitelisting is unlikely to be present on an end-users’ device, making it impossible to stop the installation of new malware.

A number of new security responses are required to cover the potential for exploitation.

One of those is Vulnerability Scanning. That’s where an automated scan is run on all the public-facing IP addresses in your network. Vulnerability scanning checks for security gaps that can be exploited by criminals.

Our vulnerability scanning service produces fast, actionable information that is risk-scored from the most- to least-risky components of your network. The report is immediately useful in guiding swift changes to reduce the risk profile of your organisation.

With so many opportunities for compromise, and so many people rapidly switching to remote work, security gaps are already appearing and many companies are fresh targets. Our vulnerability scanning process takes just 3 days and provides reliable results.

If you would like to take learn more, please call us on 1300 667 871 or contact us.