Rising Data Breaches Due to Remote Work; How Can Endpoint Security Help?

According to research, remote work makes employees happy.

With more time and a better life-work balance, 78% of telecommuters have reported that they have formed stronger family ties and improved their overall mental health and well-being due to lower levels of stress.

The conclusion? Most surveyed people want to resume working from home in their pajamas.

But are companies ready for the risk that comes with employees accessing their accounts remotely?

Well, the last couple of years also marked an increase in malicious hacking activity.

The latest report implies that there is a connection between the significantly higher volume of data breaches and the rise of remote work.

There have been more cases of data breaches and information locking and stealing malware such as ransomware.

To improve security, businesses have been using VPNs, brushing up on phishing awareness training, and building security for their increasingly complex multi-cloud structures.

Regardless, the high numbers of successful breaches show that this might not be enough.

How does telecommuting compromise data, and how can businesses protect modern infrastructure and prevent breaches with endpoint security?

Gaps in Security Due to Remote Work

In most cases, remote work creates flaws in security and increases the chance of a data breach because of:

• More information that is being shared in the cloud and shared online
• Increased attack surface
• IT and security teams who can’t address weaknesses as they would for on-premise devices

Insecure databases within the cloud that can still be accessed by potential hackers can compromise important business intelligence.

When workers connect to the company’s network from home, this adds even more devices that have to be accounted for when building a security architecture.

That is, it increases the size of the attack surface, which has to be managed and tracked for possible malicious activity.

Some of the devices used to reach the company’s cloud database might not have the proper protection (such as firewalls, two-factor authentication, or encryption) and include applications from other vendors that are riddled with flaws.

For example, an employee could connect to the network of a business via tablet or mobile phone ⁠— the endpoint of which the security teams are not aware is being used.

IT and potential security issues are more difficult to resolve because teams can’t monitor the potential hacking activity on remote devices or address technical problems that arise on the worker’s personal endpoint devices.

Preventing Data Breaches with Endpoint Security

To discover and patch up flaws early, it’s necessary to have cyber protection that is suitable for the type of company, systems, and workers that are at an organization’s disposal.

In the case of remote work, endpoint security provides thorough protection against common incidents such as data breaches.

How to choose the best solution on the market?

Comprehensive endpoint security should have:

• Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
• Advanced threat prevention
• Data protection

All of these capabilities and the data that is analyzed and generated into reports for security professionals are presented in a single dashboard.

Even more, the solution traces the state of security at all times with automation and generates the analytics and suggested solutions in real time.

Let’s get into more detail on how these functions improve overall endpoint security.

Safer and More Private Network

VPN forms a private tunnel that hides corporate activity and data sharing from the public.

Even more, it encrypts the data that is being shared.

As a result, the activity exchanged between the remote worker and the company is hidden away from the prying eyes of a threat actor.

This solution is often recommended for remote companies, but it has to be paired with other tools because VPNs themselves can be compromised and hacked.

Automated EDR Solution

Endpoint Detection and Response is a cybersecurity solution that automates threat hunting by continually detecting possible exploits, investigating malicious activity, and responding to (mitigating) potential hacking exploits.

It covers the complete attack surface and can be applied to any of the devices that workers use to connect to the company’s network from their homes.

Sophisticated Threat Prevention

Zero-day attacks fall under the umbrella of sophisticated attacks. They are notoriously challenging to discover because the new types of exploits bypass traditional security tools such as firewalls and antivirus.

Behind the more advanced threats is the hacker that developed unique malware for which the company lacks the suitable tools and has to be dealt with manually by the security professionals.

Advanced protection tools discover suspicious activity within the network early ⁠— before the threat actor obtains data or gets deeper into the system.

Data Compliance and Protection

Knowing where the data is at all times and linking that with the potentially harmful activity within the system is necessary to detect potential data breaches.

Corporate records and sensitive data of users, companies, and employees need the most attention because hackers are usually after such information when they get illicit access to the system.

What’s more, the data has to be compliant with the latest data security laws, such as GDPR.

Considering that the volume of records that any business nowadays has to guard is high and growing within minutes, the process of data security is also automated.

Making the Future of Work Safer

Whether in full or hybrid form, remote work is the future of how companies do their business.

Workers prefer working from home because it saves money and creates more time for them to spend with their loved ones.

Insufficient security endangers the devices and personal data of both companies, their users, and their employees.

To make the future of work where the employees can avoid long commutes to the company’s premises and balance their personal and work life better, comprehensive endpoint security should be a priority.

It should account for the most common vulnerabilities that appear with telecommuting and keep cyber protection comprehensive and up-to-date.