Introduction

What a difference a year makes. In March and April of last year, the pandemic changed billions of lives in many ways, including workers needing to work from home rather than their usual office.

Overnight, company networks moved from a centralised corporate space, protected by layers of firewalls, anti-virus software and hardware to an employees’ kitchen table and home broadband.

Overall, organisations appear to have handled the sudden move to remote working well. However, most networks weren’t set up to handle large scale remote working and such a rapid shift to the cloud and other types of digital technology.

Clearly, the changes in the shape of company and public-sector IT networks have big implications for cyber security.

It’s unclear what, if any, long-term effects the pandemic will have on how and where we work, but a hybrid of cloud-based home and remote working with office and client site meetings seems likely. About four in ten UK employers said they expect more than half their workforce to work regularly from home after the pandemic has ended, according to research published last year by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)1.

What does this rapid change mean for organisations’ cyber security? Is there a risk that in the rush to remote and flexible working, and an increasing reliance on cloud computing, organisations are creating new IT security headaches? How are organisations handling the transition? Is there best practice? What are the main security risks of the new “perimeterless” network, and how can the risks be mitigated?

To find out we interviewed security and business leaders at organisations in various industries on these and other pressing security matters.

This eBook combines these findings with our insight to offer a guide to embedding the digital workplace into business strategy.