Keeping your meeting room cybersecure in today’s hybrid workplace

Cybersecurity has been top of mind for many CIO’s, CTO’s and IT-decision makers. They may have wondered whether the rules for cybersecurity have changed during the covid-19 outbreak. And, in fact, they have. The World Health Organization reported a fivefold increase in cyber attacks.

In today’s hybrid workplace cyber criminals found unique opportunities to leverage existing attack tactics, techniques and procedures to exploit new opportunities created by a massive increase of employees working from home, children using home computers for schooling, as well as the human factor and emotions caused by the pandemic.

Protecting data against malicious attacks, especially when we are working and meeting remote, is a huge focal point for IT professionals. Let’s explore what this means exactly.

Workforce has a crucial role to play

The most dangerous cyberthreats today are the ones that find their way into a company via your employees. Phishing attacks or malicious emails that hackers use to gain entry into a company are the best tools for hackers: social engineering has become an “on-ramp”. By learning who someone is and how they work, hackers leverage that information to access company information. So, it is the employee that could present the greatest risk for an enterprise.

IT organizations know that workforce is their most critically vulnerability and put many defence mechanisms in place: antivirus equipment, firewalls, and specific server equipment. At the same time they also have the opportunity to educate and empower workforce on how to implement security best practices and make them guardians of the company.

Keeping Shadow IT solutions safe

Just a few months ago, there were a lot of things that were still “accepted” in terms of security. But now, with more people working from home, companies are becoming very conscious about the tools employees are using in their home offices. Especially those solutions that employees recently installed themselves in absence of on-site IT professionals, are potential dangers. This is what we call shadow IT, or applications and infrastructure that are managed and utilized without the knowledge of the enterprise’s IT department. How can you keep data and connections of these tools secure, especially when so many workers are working hybrid and remote? That’s exactly the issue Zoom encountered as millions around the world started to jump on the platform to collaborate with friends and business partners. The quick expansion failed to scale the most important of all things: the security of the platform.

With the re-opening of businesses, employees want to return to the workplace where remote and hybrid collaboration can be done in a safe and especially cybersecure way. Using smart, wireless collaboration solutions, like ClickShare and ClickShare Conference, is imperative to ensure seamless, secured engagement and connection between in-office and remote workers.

For Barco, balancing security and usability of their ClickShare range is a continuous exercise. Especially today we are very conscious of the environment our products are being used in and have extra attention for data security when designing exactly those solutions that meet our customers’ needs.
- Michaël Vanderheeren
Product Director Meeting Experience at Barco ClickShare

Read more in a recent interview with reporter Aviva Zacks from Safety Detective. A unique perspective on what Michaël Vanderheeren views as the greatest cyberthreat currently in play and how COVID-19 has forever changed the cybersecurity landscape.