As COVID-19 quarantine restrictions ease, many companies are implementing plans for when their employees return to the workplace. And for good reason: Come September, the majority of senior technology executives expect more than half of their workers will be heading back to the office, according to a recent CNBC Technology Executive Council survey of senior technology executives.
While many variables are still to unfold between now and September, organizations that do scale up in-office work are focused on safety protocols, including social distancing, face masks, and temperature reading for employees. But they may be overlooking another risk: the devices heading back into corporate walls after months of operating on home networks.
“Many CISOs lost most of their ability to control what hardware devices were used by their remote employees,” says Yossi Appleboum, CEO of hardware device security firm Sepio Systems and a former hardware security intelligence agent. “Many of these employees have connected uncontrolled peripheral devices to their corporate laptops. These peripherals are potentially cyberattack tools used by bad actors to gain access to secured organizations and, in most cases, cannot be seen by the installed endpoint security tools.”