Defining Cybersecurity in a Hybrid World

The best thing about the hybrid world of work is that it allows employees to work in the office or from anywhere. In reality, hybrid working offers a flexible work structure in which some employees perform their duties as remote employees. Other employees also prefer to work in an office environment.

However, from a cybersecurity perspective, a hybrid work environment needs to be dramatically improved. This is because remote workers have become an easy target for hackers and other cyber idiots due to the coronavirus crisis.

Read this post in detail to learn how cybersecurity can be vastly improved in a hybrid world.

Personal or business devices need to be protected

With all of us living in the COVID-19 era, a one-size-fits-all approach to cybersecurity no longer works. In addition, some remote workers use their personal devices when it comes to performing their official duties.

In addition, some remote workers prefer to use their corporate devices when performing their official duties. In this situation, the role of the cybersecurity team comes in handy. As a result, cybersecurity teams need to focus on improving the security status of personal and corporate devices on a regular basis.

Aside from that, they can take advantage of a premium VPN service like ExpressVPN which offers a free trial. In this way, they can effectively improve their employees’ online privacy to some extent at no additional cost.

Likewise, they are better able to protect these personal and official devices or systems from various cybersecurity risks such as hacking, malware, phishing attacks, etc.

Dealing with risky employee behavior

When you start working as a remote worker or employee, your perspective on cybersecurity tends to change, intentionally or unintentionally. This is where the situation gets tricky, as hackers and other cyber criminals only need one opportunity to take full advantage of your negligence.

Therefore, cybersecurity teams must provide cybersecurity training specifically to remote workers. This can change the potentially risky behavior of employees for the right reasons.

In addition, remote workers need to be motivated enough to improve their cyber hygiene practices. For example, they should use various online protection tools like Password Manager, LastPass, Digital Vault, VeraCrypt, BitLocker, Mimecast, IronScale, Phisprotection, etc.

This enables remote workers to adequately protect their personal and official devices or systems from various cyber threats.

New faces, new challenges

As a company or organization recruits new remote workers, the chances for various cybersecurity issues rise to another level. As an employer, you cannot perfectly predict their level of cybersecurity knowledge.

Unfortunately, new hires are easy targets for cyber terrorists as they can attack them in various ways such as phishing attacks, social engineering, etc.

In this scenario, an organization or company must first encourage them to go through their official cybersecurity guidelines. Plus, it can’t hurt to introduce them to your cybersecurity experts or teams, as they can get together to discuss important cybersecurity issues in good time.

Secure official cooperation or communication

Due to the coronavirus crisis, the way of communication has changed drastically worldwide. You need to work with your suppliers, customers, employees and third parties all the time.

In addition to sending emails, companies or companies have started to introduce numerous interactive communication channels such as Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc. in order to greatly improve their cooperation with other companies.

However, all of these new channels of communication have become new security challenges as hackers or other unwanted people can access these channels in order to achieve their notorious goals.

Hence, cybersecurity professionals or teams working in companies or organizations need to step up their cybersecurity efforts in the right direction.

Remote or office-based employees remain the main target for hackers

Regardless of whether employees provide their services as remote or office workers, they will always be on the hit list of cyber criminals. They will keep developing new techniques to fool them through either phishing attacks or social engineering scams.

In reality, hackers know that they are just a click away from a successful cyber attack. Hence, they regularly send phishing emails to remote or office workers.

In this case, remote or office workers need to be extra careful when they click on suspicious links or attachments in emails sent by unknown people.

Otherwise, they could compromise their privacy and at the same time, their organizations or companies may have to pay the price for their negligence.

Summarize things

The hybrid working environment offers employees a feeling of security, as they can work remotely or in their offices according to their preferences. However, they are prone to various cyber risks as cyber idiots like hackers, scammers, identity thieves and others can target both remote and office workers to easily access sensitive official networks of different companies or organizations.

Therefore, companies or organizations need to improve their existing cybersecurity practices as best they can in order to adequately address numerous security problems such as malware, ransomware, hacking, phishing, data theft, etc.