One of the impacts following the arrival of COVID-19 was to upend many working practices, most notably hybrid working. Employers have trod carefully, given that simply calling everyone back to work leads to many resignations. 47.4 million employees quit their jobs voluntarily in the past year in the U.S., making the decision more challenging as employers try to balance what employees want with what the organization needs.
David Powell, President of Prodsocore has told Digital Journal what he has told business leaders faced with making the decision: “you don’t have to choose”.
Powell explains: “Companies are evaluating their return-to-work policies as an ‘either/or’ situation – either everyone needs to be back in the office full-time or everyone needs to be remote. We think the better solution for employees is ‘and/both’. What employees want most is flexibility. There are clearly benefits to working in an office – camaraderie, team building, and cross functional team collaboration. But there are also benefits to working from home – improved work/life balance, no time wasted commuting, and easier childcare management.”
Powell advocates a hybrid approach, recommending: “Employers should look to adopt a hybrid solution that captures the positives of both scenarios and minimizes the negatives.”
According to McKinsey, nine out of ten organizations planned to combine remote and on-site work in the post-pandemic era.
But how secure is the hybrid approach? The hybrid model offers data security challenges to businesses regarding remote workers’ access to the enterprise network.
According to the CIRA Cybersecurity Report, approximately 30 percent of organizations have seen a spike in cyberattack attempts since the beginning of the pandemic. Bad actors sent 61 percent of malware through cloud applications to target remote workers in 2021. When remote work was a factor in an attack, the average cost of a data breach was $1.07 million more than when it wasn’t. Furthermore, two-thirds of company employees use company-issued devices, but 50 percent of the hybrid workforce claims occasional usage of personal devices for work purposes. This highlights the scale of unsupervised and unmanaged access to a company network.
While lack of the right technology or resources certainly plays a role in data breaches, online employee behavior is a critical cause. A Verizon report shows that 85 percent of data breaches are related to the human element. Unsecured home Wi-Fi networks, using personal devices instead of enterprise computers, accessing sensitive data, and rapidly expanding use of cloud-based applications are some cybersecurity challenges of hybrid work. Also, the company’s data is at risk when remote workers browse websites without filters or download potential viruses.
Martynas Paskauskas, the head of development at NordLayer has told Digital Journal: “Disabled user authentication, lack of end-to-end encryption, infrequent updates, and unbacked data are additional factors that invite data breaches and malicious activities during hybrid work. Phishing emails, physical security, password hygiene, and the dangers of public Wi-Fi networks should receive extra attention because these are some of the most common gateways for cybercriminals.”
Companies can mitigate the cyber threats of hybrid work with adequate security controls and practices. For example, using a VPN-enabled secure network and only granting network access with zero-trust, together with multilayered cloud solutions.
