How can DLP help remote workers?

Despite the benefits of remote work, the risk of data loss has increased with its introduction.

The remote work environment may seem uncertain for employees who understand the value of sensitive assets but feel more vulnerable to attacks or incidents at home.

Here's how data loss prevention helps increase employee satisfaction when working outside the office by providing solid protection against breaches and accidental causes of unauthorized disclosure.

New everyday life

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly accelerated the adoption of a long-anticipated increase in remote work for many workers. Because data covering several years of research showed a negligible impact on productivity, many companies decided to introduce a remote or hybrid work system.
Remote team members communicate easily using tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or social media platforms. This makes full-time work at the company's headquarters simply unnecessary.

Safety concerns

• Phishing scams

Hackers realize that remote workers are more likely to fall victim to phishing attacks if they can't get co-workers to verify the authenticity of requests or messages in real time. It also appears that remote workflows and even the environment can contribute to the effectiveness of this type of attack, with 47% of team members citing distraction as the reason they fell for a work-from-home scam.

Being aware of the spread of phishing is a valuable practice, but it doesn't solve the problems of employees who have to check every message and see if it contains malware or links that could lead to data loss.

• Unsecured Wi-Fi

The networks that users connect to while working remotely are not necessarily secure. Threats include connecting to fake hotspots, where hackers can spy traffic, steal authentication cookies and extract data from applications or business systems.

When employees access legal public Wi-Fi networks in coffee shops or libraries, they are often open and easy for information to be intercepted. In 2021, a Tel Aviv researcher managed to breach 70% of the city's 5,000 sample networks.

• Using the same device for work and personal purposes

In an ideal world, remote workers would have their own laptops through which they connect to corporate resources. Unfortunately, sometimes small companies cannot afford such an investment. In other enterprises, less stringent policies allow connection to business data and applications from a range of employee-owned endpoints, including laptops, desktops and mobile devices.

Using the same equipment for work and personal purposes seems less safe. Employees are likely to feel limited in the software they should download for their own use or the websites they can access, even if they use the computer after working hours. This may translate into time spent performing duties and increase the tension in everyday work activities.

High-profile data breaches involving remote workers

Greater control over data related to remote work does not fully alleviate employees' cybersecurity concerns. Here are some well-known media-covered examples of human errors at home or intrusions using remote workspace tools:

• In 2022, a hacker broke into the Slack channel of video game manufacturer Rockstar and managed to steal proprietary information about the game,
• In 2021, cybercriminals used stolen credentials to access an internal Slack channel at EA, extracting 780 gigabytes of valuable information in the process.
• The infamous Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack began with a compromise of a VPN account often used by remote workers to connect to IT applications and other business tools.
• In 2020, a 17-year-old hacker broke into several well-known Twitter accounts (currently X), first of all gaining access to the profiles of platform employees who worked remotely and had access to internal tools.

DLP meets the requirements of remote work

Data loss prevention tools provide an effective way to protect your data from unauthorized sharing, transmission or disclosure. They work by detecting, monitoring and sensitive resources. The ideal solution will work on multiple operating systems, e.g. Windows, Linux or Mac, and reflect the range of different devices that remote workers will use.

You should pay attention to content-aware protection to take control of the endpoint and block data from being transferred to risky areas such as Google Drive. The ability to encrypt or delete data stored on employee devices can alleviate concerns about remote work and the possibility of information being accidentally left on computers.

With the likelihood of data loss or leakage significantly reduced, employees can focus on important tasks without worrying about cybersecurity.

CoSoSyS Endpoint Proctor offers remote work protection and prevents data leakage from mobile and remote workers.

To learn more about the solution, contact Damian Malinowski, who is the solution manager at Bakotech.