EXPERT
OPINION
Is your
cybersecurity
ready for a
return to the
office?
Tamer Odeh, Regional Director at SentinelOne
in the Middle East, discusses the preparation
CISOs and CIOs should consider to offset security
implications that arise from returning workforces
from home and back to the office.
Tamer Odeh,
Regional Director
at SentinelOne ME
hile governments
W
and public
healthcare
specialists are
looking into the
timing and manner
of reopening the
economy, at some point in the hopefully
not-too-distant future restrictions will
be eased and businesses will return to
normal operations.
Returning to recently vacated offices will
certainly signify a return to normality,
and for most, that will be a welcome
relief after working from home for
an extended period. However, just
as the shift to working from home
required organisations to adapt and act
differently, so will the return to the office.
In this article, we discuss the
preparation CISOs and CIOs should
consider making to offset several
security implications that arise from
returning your workforce from home and
back to the office.
Making sure returning devices
are safe to use
When returning to the office, employees
will haul back all the IT equipment they
have used at home. Some of this is trivial
office equipment like screens, docking
stations and cables, but computing
devices can be a security blind spot.
Rogue devices: While unknown
connected devices always pose a
security risk, the return to the office
represents an even bigger risk. People
could have used all sorts of devices
during their time at home, for leisure and
convenience. While there, such devices
may not pose a serious security risk, but
if they are introduced to the corporate
network, they could become one.
Do run a scan on your network to identify
new, unknown devices.
Home laptops: Some employees
working from home may have had to use
their own laptops, either because in the
rush to vacate offices the IT department
might not have had sufficient inventory,
or just through personal preference. In
such cases, they are likely to bring these
laptops with them when they return to
the office, plug them into the corporate
network and continue to work as they
had been doing at home. These devices
could potentially be infected with
malware if they have not been running
updated, corporate-grade EDR solutions.
Do forbid work on personal laptops in the
corporate environment whenever possible.
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