Hybrid working is still putting some businesses at risk of cyberattack

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(Image credit: Shutterstock / Patdanai)

Hybrid working may be great for productivity, but it’s a cybersecurity nightmare, a new report fro IONOS has found.

Surveying 609 IT decision-makers in multiple industries, IONOS found that cybersecurity teams are worried about employees keeping their devices away from the corporate network for too long, not paying attention to security when working remotely, and as a consequence - their endpoints being used as a gateway for malicious attacks on the company network.

All of this makes IT teams work extra hard. More than two-thirds (69%) of respondents have said hybrid working placed more pressure on the teams, as they seek to prepare their organization for future threats. 

Opting for multi-cloud

To tackle the problem, organizations need to do three things, the report has found: communicate more regularly about the increased cybersecurity risks caused by hybrid working; invest more in employee training and education, and create longer-term strategies. 

All of this, however, starts with extra funding, and most organizations are aware of that. Two-thirds (67%) of ITDMs polled for the report said their firms increased the budget for their cybersecurity strategies. 

Peter Prahl, SVP International and Digital Cloud for IONOS said a multi-cloud strategy could prove beneficial, “not only address cyber-threats but manage sensitive data securely as well.”

Many firms have already gone down that path, as well. Almost two in five (38%) have “increasingly looked at” cloud-based IT operating models, with an additional 38% saying they’ll “increase the use of hybrid cloud management”. A further third (35%) are moving workloads and applications to the private cloud.

“An improved cloud strategy can provide scalable, flexible and most importantly secure platforms for businesses,” Prahl concluded. 

For businesses opting for the cloud, it’s vital to remain compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Prahl added, and that way eliminate any further complications surrounding data security.

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.