Rush to Work From Home Exposes Alarming Security Issues, BitSight Research Shows
Devices Exposed and Malware Widespread on Remote Office Networks, According to Review of 41,000 Organizations
BitSight, the Standard in Security Ratings, released research spotlighting significant security issues across the rapidly rising number of networks used to work from home. According to the research — which analyzed more than 41,000 organizations — companies suddenly now face newly exposed or vulnerable devices and services, and their employees are using malware-infected networks.
HR Technology News: New Licensing Agreement Expands Service Offerings with Addition of Employee Referral Software
The research comes on the heels of BitSight’s latest offering, BitSight Work From Home — Remote Office, which enables organizations to discover and monitor security issues on remote offices and networks, helping users to reduce the risk that their networks and data will be compromised.
To perform this analysis, BitSight leveraged its broad, unique visibility into global security performance along with its industry-leading asset mapping capability to identify work from home and remote office (WFH-RO) networks. The research reveals that the surge in work from home activity has dramatically expanded the cyberattack surface, leaving companies and their data vulnerable. Chief among the findings:
Work From Home Networks 3.5 Times More Likely to Have Malware
Networks used to work from home are 3.5 times more likely to have malware present than the traditional corporate network. Forty-five percent of companies had malware on their employees’ work from home networks, whereas only 13.3% of companies had malware on their corporate networks.
HR Technology News: Phenom Study: AI Recruitment Chatbots Double Candidate Leads & Increase Job Apply Rates
Networks used to work from home are 7.5 times more likely to have five or more distinct families of malware present than the traditional corporate network. Seventeen percent of companies had at least five distinct malware families observed on their employees’ work from home networks, whereas only 2.3 percent of companies were observed to have at least five distinct malware families on their corporate networks.
Well-known bot networks — networks of computers infected with malware — are more prevalent on work from home networks compared to the corporate network. For example, the Mirai botnet is observed at least 20 times more frequently on work from home networks than corporate networks, while the Trickbot malware is observed at least 3.75 times more frequently on work from home networks as compared to corporate networks.
HR Technology News: CoachLogix Unveils Enhanced Enterprise Platform at 2020 Executive Coaching Conference