Enabling Off-Network Endpoint Protection: A Critical Part of Your Remote Worker Cybersecurity Strategy

Working outside the office is no longer a trend or an office perk–it’s our new reality in 2020. And, make no mistake: Cyberattacks have not slowed down while so many people have begun working remotely outside the protections of the corporate office network. Enabling off-network endpoint protection for users is no longer optional; it needs to be a critical part of your remote worker cybersecurity strategy.

Protect Remote Workers Wherever They Go

It’s hard to imagine a world without our mobile phones, especially when it comes to working remotely from couches and kitchen tables. Smartphones increase our productivity, but their use also leads to increased security risks for organizations. Between smaller screens, multi-tasking and limited visibility in mobile browsers (i.e., not being able to hover over links), conditions are ideal for end users to get fooled and click on malicious links. Research shows that 85% of attacks seen on mobile devices occur outside of an email inbox in media like SMS messaging, where advanced detection tools and overwhelmed security teams often lack visibility into network traffic activity that points to cybercrime.

Delivering and managing a secure experience to roaming users can consume far more time, effort, and resources than IT and security teams can afford, especially when budgets are stretched thin. So how do you provide endpoint protection to roaming users on all devices? It’s simple: Make sure they always carry Cisco Umbrella.

Get Off-Network Protection with Cisco Umbrella

Your IT team probably has limited time–this was true before the rise in remote work, and it’s probably even more true right now. Cisco Umbrella combines multiple security functions into a single cloud-delivered service, helping you deliver the right level of security wherever your users are working.

Umbrella offers easy-to-deploy roaming clients designed for Android OS, iOS, Google Chromebook, MacOS, Windows and Cisco AnyConnect. These clients protect users from connections to malicious destinations and command-and-control callbacks at the DNS and IP layers, no matter where the device connects to the internet. Having a wide variety of deployment methods means that organizations can seamlessly secure all managed devices in minutes, not days or weeks. Even better, there’s no additional license fee to get remote user protection. All Cisco Umbrella packages provide roaming protection for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Chrome OS and Android devices.

With more users working remotely, they’re likely skipping the VPN. Sometimes it’s because they forget to connect, but other times, they might experience bandwidth restrictions or latency that cause a negative user experience. If you use Cisco AnyConnect, then you can simply enable the Umbrella roaming security module. It will instantly turn on and send all internet requests to Umbrella when the VPN is off, so users will be protected automatically anywhere they work. If you use a different VPN provider, no need to worry–you can deploy the Umbrella roaming client, which will work alongside any VPN.

By using the Umbrella roaming client, administrators can minimize the time and cost spent dealing with malware infections, protect users against threats anywhere they go and gain complete visibility into all internet traffic across all devices with device-level reporting. They can block users from visiting websites associated with phishing, cryptomining, ransomware and other malware, and can enforce domain-level content filtering by specific categories like “gambling,” “social networking,” “games” and more. Since policies are created directly in the Umbrella dashboard, the process of creating and managing policies is streamlined, and since enforcement occurs in the cloud, there is no negative impact to a device’s performance.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.