While in-office and remote collaboration have become the norm in organizations in the post-Covid world, hybrid work comes with its own set of cyber security challenges. Increasing risks to sensitive information and data have become a primary concern, and technology is leading the fight to address the major challenges.
A Forrester study found that while 80% of Indian companies plan to adopt hybrid work in the next 12-24 months, 71 percent of security leaders did not have high or full visibility into remote workers’ home networks, leading to A major security concern arose.
Huzefa Motiwala, director of systems engineering, SAARC and India, Palo Alto Networks, said the complex architecture of the hybrid work model, which includes multiple clouds, networks, devices and endpoints, has widened the digital attack surface. “Swapping between them while they remain part of the corporate network can leave enterprises vulnerable to such attacks. Too many of these can make cybersecurity strategy a complicated affair, while weak remote access policies and implicit trust in devices make it easier for bad actors to gain access and organize breaches,” he said.
Considering the increasing risks, networking majors have launched services to secure all the access points of an organization’s applications and infrastructure. For example, Cisco’s Zero Trust Platform is a security model based on maintaining strict access controls, trusting none by default.
“Unlike traditional security, the security offered by XeroTrust is not based solely on location. It ensures that only the right people and devices have permission to access specific data at specified times. We have a secure hybrid work solution It also integrates security at scale and makes it easier for users to verify devices, enable secure access, and always protect hybrid workers from any location,” said Minhaj Jia, director, collaboration sales, Cisco India and SAARC.
IBM has also adopted a zero trust strategy that provides effective access control to balance trust and risk. “We leverage IBM security software solutions that use machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze key parameters such as user, device, activity, environment and behavior to determine an overall risk score. This analysis leads to more accurate, relevant authentication decisions to better protect both the business and user experience,” said Prashant Bhatkal, security software sales leader, IBM Technology Sales, India and South Asia.
According to the Dell Technologies Global Data Protection Index, businesses lack the ability to manage mission-critical data because they are now handling 10 times more data than they were five years ago.
“With the increase in data, the need to manage business processes across multiple networks has increased significantly. Hence, it is imperative for businesses to ensure seamless management of data with customized cyber security infrastructure solutions. Entry points for malicious actors. With the increase in sophisticated ransomware, malware and leaks in sensitive information, loss of mission-critical data can cripple an organization, slowing their growth in the digital age,” said Ripu Bajwa, director and general manager , Data Security Solutions, Dell Technologies India.