Cybercriminals are more organized, disciplined, and persistent than ever. Compared to 2019, the FBI saw a 70% increase in reported attacks in 2020. This is not so surprising when you realize that cybercrime is a $1.5 trillion industry (more revenue than Facebook, Walmart, Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft combined).
When you take an already dangerous landscape and add the complexity of hybrid work environments where employees are constantly bouncing back and forth from home to the office, we get what The Wall Street Journal calls a “cybersecurity nightmare.”
That’s why one of our current top priorities as an outsourced IT service provider is to make sure our clients will remain as protected as possible as they begin to reopen their offices.
To help gauge your organization’s cybersecurity posture and how well it translates to our new way of working, we’ve compiled a set of questions to establish your baseline and opportunities for improvement.
Please keep in mind that these are guiding questions only, not a substitute for a comprehensive security assessment.
Hybrid Work Preparedness: Security Questionnaire
As you work through the nine questions below, make note of any questions where your answer is anything other than a confident “yes” – these are your focus areas.
- Have all users been signed up for, and taken, a security awareness training course over the past 12 months?
- Is your organization using multi-factor authentication (MFA/2FA) for all online applications?
- Is your organization using Single Sign-On (SSO) for all online applications?
- Are all company machines managed using a centralized management system for all security updates that works even when your remote workers’ computers never return to the office?
- Have you reviewed your insurance policy to include remote workers, or machines not managed by the firm?
- Have you updated your IT policies to accommodate working from home, expenditure approvals, and acceptable use of company assets?
- Have you reviewed your data backup plan to include all online applications and all machines/laptops in use?
- Have you added advanced threat detection and response software for all firm assets?
- Have you adjusted your budget to include ongoing security and prevention measures?
A New Security Paradigm
As you can see, the traditional mindset of securing your office “network” is no longer appropriate; with highly mobile workforces and increased reliance on cloud applications, we must shift our focus to protecting our data wherever it lives.
We hope this questionnaire helps bring some clarity to your security strategy, and that it makes the prospect of shifting to hybrid work a bit less daunting.
If you aren’t comfortable with the results of your questionnaire and would like to discuss whether we might be the right fit to help bolstering your defense and response strategies, we’re happy to chat!