Tag Archive for: Hybrid

Security demands of hybrid working

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A large number of employees, 73 percent, say they want flexible, remote work options to stay as a condition of their employment. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

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,…

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The New Security Demands of our Hybrid Working Future

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HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd. reports Q3 FY22 results

The New Security Demands of our Hybrid Working Future

Published on February 14, 2022

By Ram Narayanan, Country Manager, Check Point Software Technologies, Middle East

For technology leaders around the world, one of the silver linings of the pandemic was that it acted as an accelerant for digital transformation. While the disruption was mercifully temporary, some of the coping mechanisms deployed by businesses to get through it are likely to persist as we emerge into a post-pandemic landscape. One of those mechanisms is hybrid working, which has now had the chance to prove its worth in the biggest remote working experiment in history. 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% 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?

Network security in 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…

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Estonia’s new president warns of threat from Russian hybrid warfare

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Estonia’s president has warned that the Baltic states should prepare for Russia’s use of hybrid warfare tactics, saying they must be ready for cyber attacks and migrant flows to be employed against them.

Alar Karis said that although there was no direct threat to Estonia, he was worried about the thousands of Russian troops being sent to Belarus for snap military exercises. Belarus last year deliberately funnelled large numbers of migrants to its borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in an effort to unsettle the EU countries.

“We need to be ready . . . hybrid attacks, cyber attacks: these things can happen,” Karis told the Financial Times. The crisis on the Belarus-EU border last year, when migrants were trapped in often freezing conditions, “was definitely not orchestrated by the migrants themselves, but by Belarus — and even Russia itself. This is what we have to be prepared for”.

The Baltic states have raised their military readiness and called for increased Nato presence in their region as Russia continues to gather its forces on Ukraine’s border close to the eastern flank of the military alliance.

The UK this week confirmed that it would double its presence in Estonia, where it leads a 1,000-strong multinational battlegroup. Germany said it would send more troops to Lithuania and Canada is considering increasing its troop numbers in Latvia.

“Deterrence is something that works if we deal with Russians. The more troops we have over here the better,” Karis said. “For a small country like Estonia, it’s important that we feel secure.”

The Baltic countries are particularly concerned about the more than 30,000 Russian troops on an unannounced exercise in Belarus, which has strong ties with Moscow. “If these troops stay there, of course it’s a problem because [Belarus] is not going to be independent any more,” he said.

The Belarusian border with Lithuania and Poland is just 100km from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, a stretch known as the Suwalki Gap that is considered one of Nato’s…

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4 network security tips for the hybrid workplace

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Barry Bader 2 19

Barry Bader

If 2020 was the year of the pandemic, then 2021 could arguably be considered the year of the cyberattack. Gasoline suppliers, insurance companies, municipal water treatment plants, school districts, and even the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, have all been victims of data breaches or ransomware attacks this year.

While it’s mostly big businesses and high-profile hacks that make headlines, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and organizations are also targets for bad actors — costing them downtime, data, business and revenue.

The best network defense is a strong, proactive security offense. Here are four tips for organizations looking to shore up their cybersecurity protocols and products:

1. Implement a mix of threat monitoring, firewalls and anti-virus solutions: Threat monitoring, firewalls and anti-virus solutions are all valuable cybersecurity measures, but they should be used in tandem with each other and alongside smart online hygiene practices, which are basic steps that network users should take to maintain the overall health and safety of the network and its data.

It’s important to select tools that frequently update to help protect against the newest threats, and cover every connected device on your network. Threat monitoring tools actively intervene to block malicious threats like malware, DDoS (distributed denial of service), ransomware, phishing and botnet infections. They also block employees and guests from accessing compromised websites and infected links.

Anti-virus tools detect and block malicious files, but many only block malware they recognize based on signatures that have been written into the AV software. Meanwhile, firewalls allow only authorized traffic or content using configured controls, like access denial to IP addresses known to deliver malware. Even if a malicious payload is delivered, firewalls can prevent it from communicating with control-and-command servers.

2. Manage devices and passwords for an extra layer of security:

Think about all of the connected devices on your business network. From company devices to employees’ personal phones and guest devices, each of them represents a potentially vulnerable…

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