How Remote Workers are Having an Impact on the Cybersecurity Market
Information becomes more valuable as the number of references to said data increases. As more and more businesses move at least some of their employees over to a remote workspace, the amount of data created and referenced on a daily basis has grown faster than ever before. Considering that every piece of information generated in this way is of vital importance to those trying to do their jobs from home, it's also a more valuable target for data thieves and bad actors who want to cause problems.
Computer security experts have long opined that the value of a network is measured by how many users it has. Judging by this concept, remote work forces that are highly connected are extremely valuable and therefore at a much greater risk for information theft and potential cyberattacks. Add to this the fact that many newly minted remote workers don't have access to comprehensive security solutions and you can start to see how much of a maelstrom has started to brew.
A new class of programs is on the horizon, however, that makes it easier to keep track of your overall security position.
The Advent of Simple & Comprehensive Security Platforms
Almost every cybersecurity platform is built around some sort of compromise. Some are extremely feature-rich but hard to use while others aim to be simple and therefore can't protect against everything. Individuals who work from home and have to deal with sensitive data on a regular basis often need something that will protect everything they process, but they don't have an in-person IS department to back them up when problems arise.
A group of entrepreneurs have seen this gap and are working to fill it. For instance, the CEO of cybersecurity startup Aura had his own credit information stolen in 2014. He found that there wasn't any single solution at the time that could protect against every sort of potential network threat without requiring the services of a full-sized IS department at all times. This experience inspired him to create Aura, which is designed to harness the power of artificial intelligence and existing data collection paradigms to predict the possibility of a cyberattack showing up at any given time.
Several other organizations have followed suit and claimed that they were going to develop related AI-based solutions, which would presumably use comparable technologies. An immense amount of information regarding existing cyberattacks has been collected and these records go back to the dawn of computer security. As a result, predicting the odds of a threat shouldn't be a herculean task. Some technologists are even suggesting that some of these tools could be used to provide endpoint security for printers and other peripherals.
Slaying Virtual Giants with Simple Software
Until now, the only tools capable of doing so have been extremely complex, which has limited their adoption mostly to server rooms and developers of mobile apps. That's changing as developers leverage the power of heuristic AI algorithms to catch threats on even the most basic consumer hardware. Ironically, these tactics were employed in the field of financial analysis before they were deployed to manage OPSEC-related issues. This may have allowed the proliferation of fake support sites that were now seeing in the marketplace.
Since a predictive intelligence agent is capable of predicting the possibility of a breach happening, it can stop it before it happens and therefore protect a server that remote workers are logged into. That kind of technology is already hard at work helping to stop the kinds of distant-side problems that people might run into. On the other hand, local tools that incorporate these subroutines are much more recent.
Simple programs could theoretically predict the chances of a breach occurring on a local computer or any mobile device that an individual user was working with at home. This is precisely what startup companies like Aura want to take advantage of. Globally, over 30,000 URL-referenced resources are compromised on a daily basis. Many of these are part of small local networks that would benefit from a simple AI-based solution that individuals could manage by themselves.
Few current production security products boast that level of flexibility while also doing the job effectively. Software scams and fake antivirus packages have taken over the home market in some ways, which has made it more difficult than ever for consumers to make wise decisions about the products that they should be investing in. Fortunately, though, it looks like this new breed of entrepreneur is poised to dramatically refactor the market and make a lasting impact on the security position of countless individuals who are in the process of transitioning to a new type of work paradigm.
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