{"id":1789,"date":"2021-09-08T12:39:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T12:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/cybersecurity-blog\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:45:09","slug":"distributed-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/any.run\/cybersecurity-blog\/distributed-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Distributed Work Is a Cybersecurity Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a survey released in November 2020, cybersecurity management firm Skybox announced that 73% of security and IT executives are concerned about cybersecurity vulnerabilities created by distributed work<\/a>. That’s not the concerning part, though. The survey also found that security teams have grown complacent \u2014 even though only 11% can maintain a holistic view of their attack surfaces, 93% of security executives are confident that changes to network and system configurations are correctly validated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is distributed work a cybersecurity nightmare?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We all know what happens when overconfidence meets cybersecurity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t as if we have anything to be confident about, either.  Per Canalys, Cybersecurity investment in 2020 only increased by 10%<\/a>. Worse, that was record-setting and outstripped other segments of IT. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That wasn’t the only record we saw broken in 2020, either. The year saw more data breaches and compromised records than in the past 15 years combined. <\/em>Much of this, the analyst notes, can be attributed to how rapidly everyone was forced to transition to distributed work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Organizations had to implement business continuity measures quickly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic or face ruin,” the firm explains in a press release.  “This was often at the expense of cybersecurity and bypassed longstanding corporate policies, leaving many exposed to exploitation by highly organized and sophisticated threat actors, as well as other more opportunistic hackers.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, 2021 isn’t much better. In just the past few months, we’ve seen high-profile breaches that include Microsoft Exchange and Facebook. To be blunt, the pandemic is an absolute nightmare <\/em>from a cybersecurity standpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Security teams are functionally besieged from all sides. While contending with a severe vulnerability in a software platform like Exchange or others, they must also deal with issues like ransomware, malicious insiders, and distributed denial of service attacks. And this is all while managing a completely distributed workforce,<\/a> one in which many people are using completely insecure networks and devices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to improve distributed work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that security personnel are not <\/em>helpless in this regard. It is well within their power to address the security shortcomings of remote work and the Internet of Things. Here’s how. <\/p>\n\n\n\n