The Insecurity of the remote worker, their devices, personal networks, and bad cybersecurity habits create a massive threat surface for cybercriminals to easily take advantage of.
We already are seeing projections that the current remote workforce isn’t going anywhere and a majority of workers will remain remote in the future. So it’s critical that organizations make certain their remote workers are secure using the same standards as would be used if the worker was in the office. But new data from security vendor Bitdefender paints a rather bleak picture about the stat of cybersecurity for remote worker and their working environment. In their report, The ‘New Normal’ State of Cybersecurity, it’s found that the remote worker is anything but secure:
- 87% have the WinRM service still enabled (allowing remote session attacks)
- 64% have unpatched vulnerabilities that are older than 2018 on their devices
- 56% of attacks on remote workers involve port scanning
- Covid-related attacks are on the rise, with 4 in 10 emails on the topic are fraud, phishing, or malware
There’s one last stat that makes it clear where the source of this insecurity lies: 93% of employees are still using old passwords. This and the preceding stats directly point to a lack of the organizations communicating with and educating the user on cybersecurity issues like the need to patch personal devices, properly securing their device with even the OS firewall, and good password hygiene.
Organizations wanting to significantly reduce this massive threat surface should be investing in Security Awareness Training for their users to train them on the need for having a security mindset, the importance to themselves and the organization, and ways to better secure their device, network, email, and employer.
