2020 Cybersecurity Solutions Needed in a Post-Coronavirus (COVID-19) World

Companies in the new post-coronavirus world order must now quickly double down on secure mobile workforce enabling solutions. 2020 security changes are being driven by: 1) the coronavirus, 2) a reduction in skilled workforce availability, 3) a desire to work remotely, 4) a fast moving attack surface that requires quick changes to security, and 5) increasing regulations impacting us directly or via our partners, vendors, and customers.

How Companies Need to Respond to New Requirements

• Provide for employees who want or need to home office security to that they can seamlessly work from home
• Be able to scale your staff up or down quickly to react to growth opportunities, recessions or disasters
• Provide strong and consistent security for onsite, mobile or at-home workforce
• Define and implement more and better security that meets a growing list of cybersecurity regulations
• Satisfy customer’s, vendor’s and partner’s security requirements in order to continuing doing business
• Defend against an increasing number of real-time threats and attacks that utilize a high level of attacker sophistication including AI automated attack tools

Cybersecurity Solutions for a Coronavirus & Fast-Moving World

Two major areas that companies need security solutions are:

1. Enabling secure remote workers and
2. Providing the ability to scale companies quickly and economically, with a high level of security

#1 Securing Remote Workers

The need to work remotely maybe a planned lifestyle event or may be required to respond to crisis like the COVID-19 coronavirus or other events. Remote work can put a strain on your organization due to the sheer number of employees accessing shared resources. Home office security is as important as the security in your main offices and must be put under the security umbrella.

Top cybersecurity solutions required to enable secure remote workers when working at home.  

• Secure VPNs on all computers
  • No secure VPN, no connection allowed
• Secure home office infrastructures
  • Replicate your corporate offices essential security with, real firewalls, secure WiFi, endpoint security, MFA, and key data protection security
  • No one gets access with MFA authentication
• Corporate approved & up-to-date security on all PCs and connected endpoints when accessing corporate network, applications and data
  • Verified by your VPN, network or application
• Sufficient IT and security infrastructure to support all your remote staff
  • Scalable cloud infrastructure that supports all users working at once securely
• Move to cloud-based infrastructures (data centers and cloud applications)
  • Cloud enables remote access and scalability
  • Necessary to scale businesses and to work from home and remotely
  • Most companies are doing this in a controlled or uncontrolled way already. Put together a plan and make sure it is controlled
• Secure your cloud-based infrastructures and applications
  • Don’t assume your vendors are securing your data. They aren’t
  • Secure access control is job #1
  • Secure your data access, usage and movement

#2 Outsourced Security

It is difficult to hire enough experts to manage, monitor and remediate your security.  Even if you can, can you afford it? With the advent of the coronavirus, many companies are implementing hiring freezes. IT staff who are not used to working from home may create IT disruptions or insecure management of your IT or security infrastructure. Can your organization monitor and respond to security threats for both onsite and remote workers?

Key solutions that can be obtained by outsourcing include the following:

• Risk assessments
  • Assess your risk and define a plan that covers all your IT, cloud data centers, cloud applications, office workers, home workers, travelers.
• Security experts to help with planning and guidance
  • Rather than hire for every requirement and expertise, rely on a partner that has already has a team of experts.
• Managed security
  • Pretty much any type of security product can be managed remotely including the entire security infrastructure. Is it really economical or practical for companies to hire experts on every security product and security solution?
• Managed 24×7 monitoring, detection and response (MDR)
  • Latest generation security solutions require more than just managed security products. Regulations and best practices require monitoring of the entire security solution and quick analysis and action when threats and attacks are detected. MDR services provide full monitoring of all your security, servers, and cloud, correlate events and provide actionable responses to threats and attacks.

Security Response Summary

Companies need to plan for scaling their companies to accommodate future growth in a time when there are severe shortages of skilled security resources. Scaling companies in the 21^st century requires more and more outsourcing of people and infrastructure. Using outsourced security companies as partners solves many of the people and expertise resource issues. Using cloud infrastructures like Amazon AWS and cloud-based applications (like Salesforce, financial, payroll etc.) allows for rapid scaling of IT hardware and software with always up-to-date systems.

Dealing with increased security regulations requires resources with experience in security regulations and privacy laws.  Regulations require 3^rd party risk assessments, security plans, appropriate security for your risks, security monitoring, management, reporting and ongoing adjustments.

Let us help you deal with the impact from the COVID-19 coronavirus and prepare your company for the latest security challenges whether it be home office security or outsourcing. We provide risk assessment, compliance, managed security, MDR and security products from all leading vendors. Most importantly, we help you plan, implement and manage your security.

Contact us today!