CYBERSECURITY POST COVID-19: ENSURING SAFE RETURN TO WORK

NEELESH KRIPALANI
Sr. VP & Head - Center of Excellence, Clover Infotech

The COVID-19 pandemic has created many challenges for businesses across the globe. At first, it was employees working from home and the cyber risks arising from the same. But now as we adapt to the 'new normal', many people are looking to make the transition back to office and there are new set of challenges to ensure safe return to work. The relaxation of stay-at-home orders and work restrictions are going to result in additional cybersecurity concerns which arise from the rapid reintegration of remote workers.

As there was a sudden switch to remote working style, there is an increased reliance on personal devices (such as personal computers, USB drives and other peripheral devices) for office related work. If any of these personal devices are compromised due to lack of security measures, then they can pose a serious threat to an organization’s infrastructure as soon as they are connected to the internal network.

The new work-from-home world has poked countless holes in security perimeters. In the new normal, organizations and especially CISOs need to remain vigilant to various forms of risks and vulnerabilities that may appear once employees start returning to workplace. Some office-bound reflexes may have relaxed while working from home which can provide an opportunity to hackers to breach into the organization’s network.

Thus, while the health of your employees must be the top priority while planning the return to work, you must also give due importance to the cybersecurity aspect to safeguard the organization’s systems and data.