With the sudden enforcement of lock downs by governments worldwide to stem the spread of Covid-19 within the local community, businesses were forced to rapidly arrange work-from-home (WFH) arrangements for its employees to keep some level of business operations functional. This ultimately involved businesses to throw everything needed from office servers and databases up into the virtual cloud just so that employees can maintain access to those data while in WFH mode. Not many businesses were so lucky or able to move operations completely to the cloud so easily due to many industry unique limitations, costs, time limitation, incompatibility and limited infrastructure support. 

While a good majority of businesses did manage to succeed in implementing WFH arrangements, not many do realize the extreme business risks they just got themselves into.

Home is where the heart is

Indeed. Many employees felt the exhilaration when “the boss” suddenly announced the WFH arrangements in such short notice. The ‘ideal’ work-life balance scenario suddenly came true for some as they are now able to spend more time with their loved ones at the comfort of their homes and all their hoarded amenities and relaxing gizmos. To some, these are distractions. But unknown to many, these are business risk multipliers.

While most businesses have had invested sums in shoring up data security systems and infrastructure within the office premises, with all the gadgets and home devices and unsecured home network systems, businesses now face bigger threats that their databases may be compromised when being accessed remotely using unsecured or unprotected networks and devices during the WFH. 

Worse off is if company assets, such as laptops or computers, were used by employees at home to multitask with other things such as binge streaming videos and media or personal online errands. Insurance and warranties may not cover the damages sustained on such assets when used outside the office premises or outside its intended purpose. Hence if a malicious software infects the system while being used other than for work, it could jeopardize the asset and the business data contained within it, or, even cross infect other users over the business database network.

The malware within

Not many businesses were completely prepared or have anticipated their government’s last minute lock-down decision but businesses scrambled all they can to ensure business continuity to a certain degree. Especially with all the scheduled delivery and deadlines, businesses tried to ensure that each employee remains in contact, operational and safe while on WFH. 

Some businesses have been using laptops from the beginning hence implementing WFH was relatively easy. However, some businesses used immovable desktops and had to arrange means for employees to carry on their work using other devices. Due to limited stocks of affordable laptops in the market, businesses had to allow employees to use their personal devices to access files remotely or receive their business emails. 

This inadvertently created a huge security risk for the business as most personal devices aren’t well protected with data encryption software and may already be infected with malware from all the personal sharing and streaming of emails, video apps, game apps, participative media contents, web browsing and much more. Also, malware may come hidden within game apps and files that were downloaded by other users of those devices and may get into the business email system and infect others including business clients.

It only takes one click of a phishing email URL scam to activate a file-less attack that will cross infect other users and devices in the network and business network systems remotely. These attacks can silently and immediately cripple businesses and with the use of unregistered and unprotected personal devices by so many employees, businesses are even more exposed and extremely vulnerable to ransomware and malware threats than ever before. With the on-going Covid-19 panic, phishing email scams making use of Covid-19 responses or highly searched for meta-tags have increased significantly online.

Enemy at the gateway

While some businesses presume that a Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution would save lots of time and costs in ‘virtualizing’ the business databases and work network onto the internet, VPNs without an adequate End-point Detection and Remediation (EDR) tool is extremely risky. A VPN server exposes your entire work-group network publicly onto the internet, which means if your employees can reach it, so can others too. Without adequate layered end-point security protection systems and protocols to protect the VPN, hackers can easily brute-force their way into the network to steal data or to coerce some form of ransom from the business victim.

There is also the risk from within. Without employer supervision and security systems covering the WFH, disgruntled or unethical employees may take advantage of the situation and download business data and intellectual property content for their own use or personal gain. Some disgruntled employees may even seek to destroy data to vent their vengeance and frustration and business employers may be already too late to try to counter or prevent such damages. Most of the time, unprepared employers and untrained tech teams will spend hours scouring over Google meta-searches just to try to find a solution or a tool to help repair or remediate the threat. Most of the online tools are freemiums or may even carry harmful viruses themselves just to ‘coerce’ you to buy the full package and may not even be able to remediate the threat completely.

In most countries, breach of client data privacy is a crime and businesses that fail to uphold or implement adequate security systems to protect such data will be severely penalized and may have their business operations suspended. When moving to WFH arrangements, most businesses have their employees working from their respective homes which makes its very difficult for the in-house tech teams to monitor and remediate data security breaches remotely, especially without an EDR. Further, some businesses may not even have an adequate tech team to manage and maintain the businesses’ data privacy protection compliance.

After Covid-19

With the gradual lifting of lock-downs around the world, business owners are already looking forward to post Covid-19 recovery and return to normal operations. However, will anything be normal at all after Covid-19?

WFH may become an un-legislated work-culture norm which may throw office and commercial rental yields back into the red while turning central business districts (CBD) into permanent ghost towns even after Covid-19. Business employers will have to square it out legally with employees on how over-time is computed and if WFH is a perk that employees should pay tax for. Manpower and relevant ministries will eventually have to choose a side; either to stand for the rights of comfort-zone entrenched employees to secure an election win and let the economic consequences be someone else’s problem, or, save businesses in order to restore normalcy in the economy and the CBD area.

Whichever the case may be, businesses will need to resume operations again and may need to reset their security postures and re-integrate employee accumulated device data into the business’ main frame while implementing new business protocols. Without a managed EDR or an adequate tech team to supervise the integration process, it will be difficult to ascertain whether all user data have been completely recovered and whether or not some of those data has been corrupted or compromised. There may also be the risk of infecting the main frame all over again if malware are not immediately dealt with at each end-point.

An EDR with sandbox visualization tools helps businesses track and analyse the source of threats and implement new measures and protocols to prevent other employees from accidentally activating phishing scams or file-less malware attacks across the WFH network. Tech teams can immediately remediate issues detected or threats prevented by the EDR tool and make known the threat to other users.

Getting the right EDR for your business

BitDefender’s GravityZone Ultra for business offers a comprehensive and complete end-point protection with various EDR tools for whichever WFH arrangement a business implements. Its award-winning heuristics and machine-learning algorithms has made it the best and most secure end-point security platform.

If you simply need a highly professional team to help you manage your EDR for your WFH arrangements, BitDefender also offers Managed Detection and Response Services to help protect, and if necessary remediate, your business data and end-point assets 24/7. Depending on your business IT budget, The Globales Initiative has global affiliate partners offering BitDefender’s EDR and managed solutions to help protect your business.