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The shift to remote working exposes organizations to new ransomware threats. Companies must not rely on their employees to take required security measures, and need to offer them a protected work environment    

The recent announcements of Apple, Tesla and other large corporations that their workers will be required to return to their office for several days a week has not abolished the need to provide workers with a safe work environment regardless of where they are working from.

Working from home or anywhere else, has become the new norm for many employees and employers, who wish to continue and work remotely for at least part of the working week.

The shift to remote working has brought with it many security challenges. People working out of the office are facing a greater risk of being exposed to ransomware and other attacks without the protection of the organization’s security system.

Workers using unsecured home networks are much more vulnerable to exploits. They might be using unprotected Wi-Fi networks and computers, more likely to visit unsecured sites, and share their laptops with other family members.

This is an ideal playing field for ransomware attackers who can use a remote workstation as an entry point to the organization’s network. This is supported by findings from a recent study published by CyberRisk Alliance Business Intelligence, which indicates that remote workers’ endpoints were the most common attack vector. The survey, conducted in January 2022, shows that 35 percent of the 300 participating IT and cybersecurity decision-makers and influencers reported that ransomware attacks exploited remote workers.

Remote workers are expected to actively work to mitigate the risks by adhering to their organizations’ security policies and by applying common sense (keeping their software up to date, refraining from opening untrusted emails, strengthening passwords, avoiding handing out personal information and so on).

Companies, can’t however, rely solely on their workers’ good will, and need nto take preventative measures that can enable safe working and protect the organization’s network.

The BUFFERZONE agent is an advanced secure workspace solution for endpoint protection, including seamless protection using automatic containment for Safe Browsing, Safe Mail, Safe Messaging, and Safe Removable.

Browsing sessions that access external, untrusted content such as unknown internet sites are kept in a virtual container, protecting trusted resources from any potential threats; email messages and attachments from untrusted sources are similarly contained.

Instead of blocking, BUFFERZONE proactively isolates potentially malicious content that arrives from browsers, from email, from communication apps like WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Teams and Zoom, and from removable storage. These are isolated in a virtual container that keeps them separate from real memory, registry, files and network resources of the computer, and from accessed valuable organizational resources. BUFFERZONE Safe Bridge enables downloads, attachments and files from removable devices to be disarmed for secure extraction from the container.

BUFFERZONE is an ideal solution for IT teams and managed security service providers (MSSP), as it offers a simple, lightweight, and cost-effective solution for up to thousands of endpoints within and beyond the corporate network to enable working safely from anywhere