Remote working is here to stay: according to Gartner, 74% of organizations expect some employees to work remotely once the pandemic is over.
At the same time, the resources people need to do their jobs are also in multiple locations: on servers in the office; in cloud-based applications like Office 365 or Salesforce; and in private or public cloud environments on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
IT teams are tasked with protecting every user and every resource, no matter where they are. Meanwhile, bad actors continue to find better and more subversive ways to penetrate increasingly virtual organizations at every intersection.
Securing organizations where people and resources can be anywhere requires:
- Secure connectivity, so users can access resources from any location: home, on-site, or in the office
- Protection for the devices used to make those connections — desktops, laptops, mobile phones, and tablets
- Protection for the data and workloads that users need to access, whether they're in the cloud or on your local network
- Simple management, so IT teams can manage their distributed organizations from anywhere, without adding to their workload
Connect Securely
There's no argument that the COVID pandemic has driven a massive increase in remote working. During May 2020, 62% of employed Americans were working from home (WFH). However, remote working was already a trend even before COVID hit, and many in-office employees were already transitioning to working from home a few days a week.
In the UK, remote working climbed at a rate of 74% in the last decade, while in Australia about a third of the workforce was regularly WFH. Remote working is a win-win for companies and staff: employees save commuting time and costs while enjoying added flexibility and greater productivity. Meanwhile, organizations reduce costs and turnover rates. But for IT teams, long-term remote working creates additional security challenges.
Whether employees are logging in from their living rooms, visiting a customer location, or sipping coffee at a Wi-Fi hotspot thousands of miles across the globe, your network and data must remain protected at all times. With Sophos, your employees can quickly, efficiently, and securely connect and work from anywhere, and we offer both traditional VPN-based and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) options.
VPN (Virtual Private Network)
Use the free, easy-to-deploy Sophos Connect VPN client together with Sophos Firewall to connect remote workers to the main office and your cloud-based resources. With over 1.4 million users worldwide, Sophos Connect gives your remote users secure access to resources on the corporate network or public cloud from Windows and macOS devices.
For the ultimate in remote connectivity, Sophos SD-RED (Remote Ethernet Device) is a simple plug-and-play device that works with the Sophos Firewall to connect branch offices, remote sites, and individuals to your main network (whether physical or in the cloud). It provides an always-on dedicated or split-tunnel VPN that's easy to deploy and manage with flexible options. It's also very small and portable, making it ideal for senior managers and other individuals who need to access a secure connection at any time, and from anywhere.
ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access)
For years, VPN technology has successfully enabled workers to connect remotely and it was a savior at the beginning of the pandemic, allowing organizations to quickly pivot to secure remote working in just days. However, many organizations are starting to want more than VPN was ever designed to deliver.
Sophos Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a great alternative to remote access VPN, enabling users to connect to corporate resources from any location in a straightforward and transparent way. At the same time, it also enhances your security by constantly verifying the user — typically with multi-factor authentication and an identity provider — and validating the health and compliance of the device.
With Sophos ZTNA, you can:
- Enhance your cyber defenses. Sophos ZTNA gives you very granular controls: any user, any device, any application can all be individually controlled based on individual corporate policy and the risk level you're comfortable with. It also eliminates the concept of implicit trust in an individual based on their presence on the network alone. Instead, it elevates protection and minimizes the risk of lateral movement within the network by continually assessing identity and device health before allowing access.
- Increase efficiency. Because Sophos ZTNA is managed through the Sophos Central platform, it's easy to enroll new users or support a changing work environment. Plus, it's more transparent for end-users and provides them with a friction-free "it just works" type of connection experience when compared to VPN.
Protect Devices
51% of organizations were hit by ransomware in the last year, with attackers succeeding in encrypting data in 73% of attacks. Couple those alarming statistics with the need to secure all sorts of equipment — desktops, laptops, corporate and personal devices — and a slew of operating systems, from Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, Chromebook, and iOS, and you have an intense cybersecurity headache brewing.
Sophos Intercept X gives you the world’s best protection across all these devices and platforms. You benefit from multiple layers of technology that stop attackers at numerous points in the kill chain, including:
- Anti-ransomware protection, which blocks the unauthorized encryption of files, hard disks, and boot records, restoring them to their safe state
- Deep Learning AI, which uses millions of file attributes to analyze threats and prevent both known and never-seen-before malware, stops them before they can execute
- Anti-exploit technology, to block exploits, active adversary techniques, and fileless and script-based attacks
- Foundational signature-based protection, which stops known threats
Source: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/solutions/use-cases/remote-working
