Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

2020 will go down in history as a year of surprises. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in challenges to health, wealth, business, and cybersecurity. The early part of the year saw a rapid movement out of the office, introducing a sudden need to support home working. According to Gartner, 88% of companies sent their workforce home to work during the peak of the pandemic. This remote work environment is continuing for many organizations in 2021. In 2020, businesses were forced to adapt fast.

In many ways, 2020 was a year of reckoning for data privacy on the internet. After more than a decade of enthusiastically embracing a “freemium” model in which consumers traded copious amounts of personal data for access to digital platforms, many are adopting a rapid about-face. Now, privacy is essential, and stakeholders are taking notice. To date, it’s clear that many companies see this as an obstacle, not an opportunity.

Every company monitors their employees to some extent. In the past, companies may have relied solely on time sheets and surveillance footage to keep an eye on their employees. But these tools cannot be used to track what employees are doing on their company-owned computers, smartphones, and tablets. To monitor these devices, managers must turn to more sophisticated tools such as monitoring software.

Dealing with insider threats requires a different strategy from other security challenges because of their very nature. Insiders have a significant advantage. They are aware of the organization’s policies, procedures, technology and vulnerabilities. They often have access to important systems, business IP and sensitive data. As such, they can cause a business the most damage compared to external attackers such as hackers.

An unprecedented number of employees in the United States are currently working remotely for at least part of their workweek. This is partially due to the global pandemic, but the truth is that many employees were shifting to remote work even before the coronavirus crisis. Studies have shown that both employers and employees can benefit from remote work.

Employee Monitoring is the process of tracking employee activities such as app use, internet browsing, email communications, file transfers etc. An employee monitoring solution allows a business to keep an eye on its users so that they cannot put the organization in harm’s way intentionally or accidentally by leaking sensitive data, sabotage, fraud, theft or other miscreants.