On Thursday, June 11th, we were joined by IT leaders from Forcepoint, Dell Technologies and Silicon Labs to learn data security best practices that organizations of all sizes can use as they shift gears from crisis response to a new normal.

Moderator Jim Fulton of Forcepoint opened the discussion by sharing the shift in business data usage. In a distant world (March), data usage typically was centered in the office.

However, now most work and subsequent data usage is done outside the office and its fortified security wall.

In the first few weeks of transitioning to a nearly complete remote workforce, businesses were focused on ensuring that networks could handle the data load and employees had access to all needed applications and communication channels. However, that focus has now shifted to data protection and threat prevention as phishing attacks are on the rise.

Carl Eberling of Forcepoint added that employees are now much more actively engaged in data security, sharing that before, he would maybe have 10 or 20 people show up to a security training at the office, but now they are holding data security webinars with over 3000 employees in attendance.

Stating that spear phishing and spoofing attacks are way up, Kevin Cross of Dell Technologies pointed out that the basic users are now the first line of defense in protecting a company's data. Sharon Hagi of Silicon Labs concurred that phishing attacks are the main type of data security threat, and employee education is critical. He is also seeing that employees tend to circumvent the VPN option because it negatively impacts their user experience and is difficult to use, which obviously causes cracks in the security wall. However, he added that:

This situation is not temporary from an IT perspective, and businesses must now find ways to enable their employees to remotely access company data safely as they adjust to this new normal.