Security demands of hybrid working

ACCORDING to the latest figures, more than two-thirds of business leaders are now planning to reconfigure their office space to accommodate hybrid working permanently, and 73 percent of employees say they want flexible, remote work options to stay as a condition of their employment. The imperative is there, and businesses are already making adjustments to their physical and digital infrastructure, but what about security?

The new normal

The shift to remote networking over the course of the past 24 months has been nothing short of profound. Nonetheless, the rapid move to remote-enabled working has been driven by necessity rather than natural innovation within the market, and that means some businesses are not adequately prepared in terms of their security setup. Remote user access has become the new normal, offering greater agility and arguably better productivity, but that means legacy security solutions like static firewalls and basic VPNs (virtual private networks) are no longer fit for purpose. Organizations are now “hyper distributed,” with applications everywhere and networks branching off in all directions. Some may have embraced SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) as a means of efficiently routing traffic and increasing the QoE (quality of experience) for users, but even SD-WAN on its own has security limitations that need to be separately addressed.

Given the sheer pace of change, it is understandable that businesses would prioritize productivity over network security in the short term, but that short-term fix is now blending into a long-term solution, and businesses need to re-evaluate their security as a result. Traditionally, a patchwork approach to security has led to a disparate array of siloed solutions, from email and browser security, right through to WAAP (web app and API protection), firewall-as-a-service, remote-access VPNs, and more. The challenge now is to consolidate these multiple product points in a unified and cohesive security package,…