Articles about Remote Working

Attacks against VPNs have seen an increase of more than 1,500 percent in the first quarter of this year according to a new report.

The latest Threat Landscape Report from managed security services company Nuspire shows a 1,916 percent increase in attacks against Fortinet's SSL-VPN and a 1,527 percent increase in Pulse Connect Secure VPN.

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Almost half of people would and nearly two-thirds would forego a promotion, according to the results of a new survey.

The study by automation platform Ivanti finds 63 percent of respondents would rather work remotely than be promoted, and 48 percent say they would take a pay cut in exchange to be able to work from anywhere. Just 12 percent say they want to return to the office full time in future.

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In a rapid and unprecedented shift, over 60 percent of Americans worked from home in 2020. But this has thrown up new challenges for businesses trying to keep their systems secure.

Authentication specialist Beyond Identity has produced an infographic looking at how vulnerable systems and applications can be in the work from home era.

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The last year has seen all businesses facing a major shift as employees have been forced to work from home.

Government agencies have been no exception to this, but they have specific issues relating to handling sensitive data. Last month the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a plan to expand remote work options and other agencies are expected to follow suit.

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A new survey shows that 86 percent of technology professionals in the UK and Europe don't want to return to the office full-time.

The study from tech job marketplace hackajob finds around one in four (26 percent) would like to work remotely permanently, while 60 percent are happy to work from the office occasionally and spend the rest of the week working from home.

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The past year has created an unprecedented shift, with businesses scrabbling to implement technologies to allow large numbers of staff to work remotely.

It seems likely that as we emerge from the pandemic a large proportion of this shift will become permanent. So, what can companies do to adapt their IT to this 'new normal' and ensure access to essential systems while maintaining security and compliance standards?

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A new survey of more than 400 IT security practitioners across North America and Europe reveals that 60 percent think COVID-induced remote work conditions have created data security issues within their organizations.

In addition the study, from encrypted USB drive company Apricorn, shows 38 percent say that data control during the pandemic has been very hard to manage. Surprisingly 20 percent of these security professionals admit that their work devices have been used by other members of their household.

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Even after a full year of remote work, many enterprises are still concerned about securing their off-site users according to a new study from cloud security company Bitglass.

The biggest remote work security concerns come from data leaking through endpoints (68 percent), users connecting with unmanaged devices (59 percent), and access from outside the perimeter (56 percent).

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The pandemic forced many employees into remote work, and cybercriminals are looking to exploit the situation by directly attacking remote desktop services as they become publicly available. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) has become a prime target. According to a study released by the cybersecurity firm ESET, attacks against RDP have increased a stunning 768 percent over the course of 2020. Malware packages like Trickbot now include RDP scanners to search for open RDP ports, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have begun using RDP as a way to magnify their impact.

This is not to say that RDP or Windows are inherently bad. RDP is an extremely useful, complex, and functionally rich protocol for remote access. The open source project I work on, Apache Guacamole, leverages RDP internally as one of its supported protocols.

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The transition to remote work has been difficult for technical teams. Software professionals were already struggling to deliver everything on their plate, and shifting to a fully remote model has resulted in ever-changing patterns of communication, making it more difficult to build the human relationships that are so important for good collaboration. Just as tech workers were settling into more agile workflows, they must now also manage cross-team collaboration and alignment without being in the same space.

Software professionals have limited bandwidth to adapt and work on the soft skills required to navigate these remote interactions, and collaboration has suffered as a result. In fact, a recent study by Lucid revealed that as much as 75 percent of respondents said that collaboration has suffered the most in their work life since the start of the pandemic, even more than productivity. This lack of successful collaboration within technical teams and across companies can have a truly detrimental impact on an organization, especially during a crisis.

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A new report from cybersecurity firm PC Matic finds that one year on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 35 percent of Americans are still working from home.

However, the study of more than 5,800 people across the US finds less than 10 percent of respondents are provided with an antivirus software solution for the personal device they use for work purposes.

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Tech issues at home can be frustrating enough when you're trying to stream a movie or set up a video call with the family, but they're even more of an issue if you're trying to work from home too.

New research from comparison site InMyArea.com looks at how tech issues are affecting the home workforce. It finds that 47 percent of employees have spent their own money to solve technical problems, with 20 percent spending $100 or more.

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Remote working continues to present a security problem for businesses and an issue that is often overlooked is the delay in patching browsers.

New research from Menlo Security looks at the importance of this issue for both desktop and remote users, focusing particularly on Google Chrome.

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New research from mobile workforce specialist Motus shows that 67 percent of business leaders expect work-from-home policies to remain in place for the long-term or even permanently.

The report also shows businesses thriving in remote environments, with 83 percent of company leaders reporting the shift to remote work has been successful for their organization. This sentiment has increased 14 percent since June 2020 and reinforces the position among 68 percent of hiring managers that remote work is becoming easier as time goes on.

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As companies near the one-year mark of the sudden shift to a 100 percent remote workforce, corporate leadership is forced to consider a new vision. Sure, remote work was a "thing" before the pandemic hit, but it was usually a day or two a week, generally a perk reserved for management. COVID-19 became the great equalizer -- everyone logged in from home every single workday.

Over the last 11 months, we’ve learned a lot about what works (and what doesn’t). Organizations have had to test and fortify their systems to support remote teams, practices and communication preferences have changed, and employees and management have grown increasingly confident that productivity and innovation can continue outside the confines of corporate headquarters.

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