For IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs), it’s anything but business as usual when it comes to securing today’s workforce. In fact, new research from International Workplace Group (IWG) revealed that 74% believe flexible working has become the new normal. Coining today’s workers as “generation flex,” the latest IWG Global Workplace Survey showed that over half of employees globally are working outside their main office headquarters at least 2.5 days each week. 

For small businesses looking for affordable ways to scale and ramp productivity, “generation flex” may be the answer — 85% of respondents in IWG’s survey confirmed that productivity has increased in their business as a result of greater flexibility.

Yet, as the remote workforce grows — the number of remote workers has grown 91% over the past ten years — so do the security implications.  Employees are accessing corporate networks and the internet from home offices or locations “on the go,” and using a combination of personal and business smart devices — and more often than not, disregarding Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.

All of this creates massive opportunities for cyber criminals to gain access via outdated software, unsecure routers, weak passwords, misconfigured cloud apps, human error, and more.

Staying ahead of IoT security risks

If you ask David Ryder, director of SMB and MSSP at Avast Business, he’ll tell you that IoT is a security risk that businesses have to manage, effectively and fast.

David Ryder, Director of SMB & MSSP, Avast Business

David recently shared his insight on IoT risk as well as security responsibilities for flexible businesses in The Times’ Raconteur article, “Protecting IoT in the Age of Remote Working”.

Here are just a few of David’s comments from the article:

“Organizations must secure remote workers and devices wherever they roam. The same security posture they have in their office environment needs to be applied to remote workers and implementing that is one of the biggest challenges they face.”

“A lot of the attacks don’t happen against the hard outer shell. Sometimes they find the soft underbelly and the remote worker is an increasingly common source for attacking an organization . . . It’s important their security perimeter is treated with as much importance as the company’s headquarters security perimeter.”

“IoT devices are being adopted faster than the security postures that most organizations have put in place . . . Security needs to be one of the foremost concerns in any IoT policy.”

Keep IoT devices protected with Secure Internet Gateway 

The good news for Avast Business channel partners and customers is that our team is continually improving our IoT device protection. For example, our Endpoint and Network Security Solutions provide the capability to inspect traffic from all IoT devices, along with other core features that keep remote workers protected.  

As David shared with The Times, “Avast Business has an always-on solution, that wherever workers are, provides the same security they get in the office. Even when working on an unsecured public WiFi network, we provide two-factor authentication and ensure the worker is always behind a robust, cloud-based firewall. It’s essential that this firewall is inspecting all SSL and HTTPS traffic, otherwise they’re close to useless.”

Be sure to check out our “always-on” network protection today with a demo of our latest service, Secure Internet Gateway, delivered right from our Avast Business CloudCare platform.