Managing the risks of the new remote workforce

Whether this trend of a bigger remote workforce is confined to the current crisis or whether the pandemic will usher in a future with more flexibility for remote work, Forrester shares some best practices to protect devices that enable remote work

During the current COVID-19 crisis, working from home is a business necessity and no longer just a nice-to-have. In a normal year, only 5% of information workers primarily work from home, but since March 2020, 47% of respondents to a Forrester survey say their organization has transitioned at least half of their workforce to remote work.  

It is unclear whether this trend is confined to the current crisis or whether the pandemic will usher in a future with more flexibility for remote work. In our recent research around the best practices to protect your homeworkers’ endpoints, we outline best practices to protect devices that enable remote work.  

Key measures to mitigate risk due to work-from-home include: 

• Promoting app-centric security. In the current environment, many employees have been forced to use their personal devices to work from home. To protect company assets that are being accessed on personal devices, invest in app-based solutions such as app virtualization, app containers, and app security that enable security professionals to deemphasize device-centric endpoint protection. 
• Automating threat detection to reduce the burden on security teams. Widespread remote work has created new burdens for security professionals. Automated security tools such as threat prevention, detection, response, and data encryption help take some of the onus off the admins, allowing them to focus energy on adapting to new challenges caused by remote work. 
• Employing unified endpoint management (UEM) platforms. UEM platforms can simplify the process of rolling out security updates and patching assets across various operating systems (OSes). Invaluable for a remote workforce, these tools also allow the security team to manage native security capabilities, gain greater visibility across devices, and enforce encryption standards across OSes.