How to secure your remote workforce and protect your business with a secure VPN

Introduction: COVID-19 creates urgent need to enable secure remote workforce

As the COVID-19 outbreak became a pandemic and increased in prevalence within the U.S., shelter in place orders were issued across the country. Seemingly overnight, the majority of most companies’ workforces were told they couldn’t come into office – that they needed to work from home.

57% of employed Americans say their employer is offering them flex time or remote work options as of April 2.
62% of employed Americans say they’ve worked from home during the COVID-19 crisis.
Three in five U.S. workers who have been working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic prefer to continue to work remotely as much as possible after public health restrictions are lifted.

As COVID-19 has called for all enterprises and employees to adapt our workdays to accommodate the new reality, malicious actors have also adapted, and they’re taking advantage of the pandemic to launch cyberattacks. COVID-19 cyberthreats are running rampant as humans are changing behavioral patterns in response to the crisis.

Meanwhile, employees are growing accustomed to a more flexible work environment. In a short period, enterprises across every industry have figured out how to run near fully remote businesses, providing employees with all the resources they need to work from home. By and large, newly remote companies are realizing it’s possible to uphold a strong, healthy company culture that makes employees feel connected while working from home full time. Through a combination of video conferencing, emphasis on work life balance and collaboration among remote teams, the global perspective on remote work is undergoing a major change.

Over 50% of employers plan to expand or increase flexible work arrangements on a more permanent basis after the coronavirus outbreak is contained.
Only 15% report that leadership doesn’t plan to revisit remote work options post-COVID-19.

As a result, corporate leadership across industries was forced to ask the questions: How do we stand up an entirely remote workforce?, How do we manage remote employees? and How do we secure our mobile workforce? From a technology standpoint, most companies who are not traditionally fully remote can provide connectivity, hardware and infrastructure to enable a fixed percentage of workers to work from home. When shelter in place swept the nation, nearly every business’ static remote portion of the workforce skyrocketed. It’s undeniable that the future of work is transforming. Now, enabling the secure remote workforce is the key to supporting business continuity.

What is remote access?

Remote access provides end users with the ability to access resources on the corporate network from a distant location. The most common function of remote access is to enable employees who are traveling or telecommuting to connect to the company network and access resources such as internal applications, intranet, mail services and file sharing.

In the past, remote access was a service that companies provided through dial-up modems. In order to avoid the expense of long distance or toll-free phone lines, companies started adopting remote access methods that took advantage of public networks over the internet. The evolution of internet technology led to a parallel growth in remote access with more adaptive, secure options.

How do companies provide remote access to employees?

The predominant method of providing remote access is via a VPN connection. Normally, a user has no expectation of privacy on a public network, as their network traffic is viewable by other users and system administrators. A VPN creates a “tunnel” that passes traffic privately between the remote network and the user. The tunnel protects the traffic and keeps it safe from interception or tampering.

An emerging model of remote access provides the benefit of a tunnel for broad application support while retaining strong control over access to applications through the next-generation firewall security policy. This approach allows administrators to safely enable remote user activity and access on the network. Combining the benefits from earlier implementations, this model is the most secure and practical remote access solution available today.

What is a VPN?

A virtual private network allows you to safely connect to another network over the internet by encrypting the connection from your personal device. Essentially, it’s a way to connect to the corporate network without being in the physical location of the office or campus. It allows for remote employees working outside of the office to connect beyond the perimeter of the typical corporate environment in a secure manner. A VPN allows remote employees to become an extension of the network as if they’re in the office with the same security and connectivity benefits. Think of it as a secure network line from a user to applications, whether those applications reside in a private data center or on a public network.

A VPN makes your internet connection more secure and offers privacy online. Organizations, governments and businesses of all sizes use VPNs to secure remote connections to the internet for protection against malicious actors, malware and other cyberthreats. Personal VPNs have also become widely popular as they keep users’ locations private, safely encrypt data and allow users to browse the internet anonymously.

With the remote workforce rapidly becoming more commonplace, enterprises across all industries are moving outside of the HQ perimeter together, but employees still need a secure way to access applications and data to do work.

There are two types of VPN:

Site-to-site VPN is used to connect branch offices to a central office over the internet when distance prevents direct network connections.
Remote access VPN allows individual users to remotely connect to a central network. In this case, the devices are referred to as endpoints

Why a secure VPN combined with remote workforce technologies is the answer to remote work challenges

The only way to secure your remote workforce is a secure VPN. Employees must connect from their laptops, desktops and mobile devices over a VPN connection. It’s the secure, private method for virtually entering the corporate office, so to speak.

In many cases, remote workforce technology requires hardware. At present, obtaining hardware quickly is difficult with shipping delays taking place globally. Fortunately, there are other ways of connecting employees to the corporate network from home while ensuring their user experience isn’t compromised. People can work productively without delays using a VPN.

Why do you need a VPN connection to securely power your remote workforce?

Allowing employees to work remotely requires the ability to access company data and software resources at the source. While providing that remote access is convenient for employees and often a productivity advantage, it requires the right measures to enable a secure remote workforce, support business continuity and protect your network because information security is a major concern. A VPN connection is the A1 way to enable your remote workforce while also effectively securing it. source. While providing that remote access is convenient for employees and often a productivity advantage, it. requires the right measures to enable a secure remote workforce, support business continuity and protect your network because information security is a major concern. A VPN connection is the A1 way to enable your remote workforce while also effectively securing it.

A quick look at the security landscape of today shows what enterprises are up against:

Employees can be almost as dangerous to a business’s security as hackers and cybercriminals.
Phishing, malware and social engineering are the most common attack types – and three risks that run rampant among remote workers.
39% of enterprises are only “somewhat confident” in their ability to accurately assess the effectiveness of phishing awareness programs.

Common remote work security threats:

Phishing attacks
Distributed denial of service
Remote desktop account attacks
Bluekeep exploits
Bypass of multifactor authentication

When it comes to the security implications of powering a remote workforce, you need to take a strategic approach to prevent data breaches. Running a remote workforce means that your employees need access to applications that are accessible through the network, making a VPN essential. A VPN effectively gives you an encrypted private connection from your endpoint – whether a mobile device, tablet or laptop – into a corporate network so that your resources aren’t open to the public internet.

Source: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/how-to-secure-your-remote-workforce