Automated Phishing Defense is a Smart Move for Remote & Hybrid Workforce Support

Many companies are starting to determine how they want to work in the future. Some previously remote work resistant companies had a much better experience with remote work than they expected and found new benefits for their business. A growing number of companies are following in the footsteps of flexible work pioneers like Twitter and Google and may not require many employees to return to the office. More than 70% of respondents to a recent survey of IT leaders projected that at least one-third of their employees will remain remote for the next 18 months. Equally popular, a blend of onsite and remote workdays. A substantial number of organizations are choosing to retain the flexibility that they’ve gained in the last 12 months by turning to a hybrid workforce model as their new way of doing business. 

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Communication Breakdown

Remote workers tend to rely on email for communication – 55% of remote workers use email as their primary form of communication. Google notched a more than 600% increase in phishing email in early 2020 at the start of the global pandemic. That all translated into more phishing email ending up in employee inboxes, to the detriment of companies around the world. More than 40% of remote workers polled recently admitted that they’d made email handling errors that caused cybersecurity incidents. But in an email-centric workforce, can companies reduce or eliminate the amount of phishing messages that staffers have the opportunity to interact with,  and shouldn’t the email security solutions that businesses already have in place be doing that? 

Traditional email security like onboard security with G Workspace and Microsoft 365 or a Secure Email Gateway (SEG) does catch some phishing email – just not nearly enough. The conventional security that most email solutions have baked into their product only stops about 40% of phishing messages. SEGs don’t fare any better – 90% of the phishing messages discovered in penetration testing by phishing experts made it through a SEG, including messages carrying ransomware and similar threats.  Plus, both of these security methods rely on human intervention in the form of patches, intelligence updates and modification to learn about new threats and make adjustments. That’s a major vulnerability and a tremendous time sink for IT staff. 

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Security Without Limits

Automated email security solutions like Graphus don’t have those limitations. Only 17% of email solutions and SEGs were able to detect previously unknown malware. This creates a clear advantage for automation. You’ll never need to load in patches or data to update Graphus. Our smart, AI-powered security rarely needs help from IT staff to keep on top of security risks. It keeps learning through experience and to master your company’s communication pattern and tailor protection as needed.  Those are major boons when supporting a remote or hybrid workforce and employees may not be getting into the office regularly for maintenance and updates. 

One out of every 99 messages a business receives contains a phishing attack. The odds are even worse for email purporting to be from major companies like Microsoft, where out of every 25 branded emails at least one is a phishing attempt. That’s way too many possibilities for disaster to take chances. In a recent survey of executives, 90% said that their companies experienced an increase in cyberattacks due to the pandemic with almost all of them (98%) incurring significant security challenges including an increased volume of phishing messages within just the first two months. 

Businesses weren’t nearly as remote-ready as they thought at the beginning of 2020, especially when it came to cybersecurity. The sudden transition to remote work left businesses reeling as they discovered that gaps in security awareness and phishing resistance training translated into major drivers of risk when their workers were no longer cushioned by in-office security resources.  About 85% of the survey respondents said that before the pandemic began, they thought that their companies were prepared to support a remote workforce. But that wasn’t the case. Only 39% of those same business leaders feel they have adequate IT expertise on staff to assist employees with remote work issues, and only 45% of organizations reported having enough budget available to address the increased activity and risk.  

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That’s a problem that can quickly be solved with security automation. Adding automated security is just like adding another worker to your security team, only without the outlay for training, pay and benefits. That new worker is also on the job 24 hours a day.  IT teams spend huge chunks of time wading through seas of alerts, and 82% of security teams chronically understaffed, leaving everyone scrambling to get the work done without adequate time to make sure that things like your email security software are really giving you the best bang for the buck. More than 90% of business leaders say that automation is a must-have to manage large alert volumes with small IT teams by making up for shortfalls that are hard to address because of the IT skills gap.  

A major lesson learned from the experience of running a business through a global pandemic is that one of the most precious commodities that you have is time – and you don’t have time to figure out how to how to secure your business when cybercriminals are knocking on your door. In chaotic situations, your business will be more susceptible to the danger of employees opening unexpected messages in error.  By adding an innovative automated email security solution now, email security automation now, you’re making a choice to be sure that you’re future-ready while adding strong, smart protection against email-based threats right now to support your agile hybrid workforce.