Hybrid work is widespread, and people are returning to the office on a more regular basis. This has made managing devices more complicated because for many, the line between home devices and office devices has blurred. Unfortunately, most people lean toward efficiency more often than security.
With a return to the office, IT admins may have questions for employees and, in some cases, a host of software updates to perform, new software to install, and likely new security-related policies to decree. In a hybrid work setup, some devices may remain in the office, while others will commute back and forth. This makes limiting use to a particular network complex, not to mention finding the extra time staying on top of security.
These challenges are only compounded by the growing threat of cybercrime: the ESET Threat Report T1 2021 found a rise in threats targeting employees working remotely. As employees blend remote work with office hours, these threats won’t go away anytime soon. In fact, with more time spent travelling and in public places, hybrid work could leave us even more vulnerable to potential risks as devices are being used outside of their intended environments.
Therefore, ensuring that the migration of both personal and work devices between home and office networks is secure may require enhanced tools and practices. This is why ESET has launched a new version of its consumer offering, including ESET Smart Security® Premium, which boasts a host of new features and improved protection for home users. The foremost among these is LiveGuard, which provides an additional proactive layer of protection against new and unknown threats cropping up in the landscape.
LiveGuard employs technology originally built for businesses to safeguard their diverse networks from both known and never-before-seen types of threats. Specifically, this is accomplished through a cloud sandbox that pulls suspicious files – whether downloaded by web browsers or by email services like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, or extracted from archives, or found on USB drives plugged into devices – to a secure cloud platform for analysis.
LiveGuard, and its cloud sandbox, lowers the risk of you being the employee that brings malware to work.
Malware and Ransomware
While there are all sorts of threats out there, most businesses are focussing on ransomware, and for good reason. Ransomware attacks have continued to evolve, and LiveGuard provides strong protection against them, regardless of any new ‘gift wrapping’. ESET has also bolstered its other protective layers including Ransomware Shield, which monitors and evaluates applications to protect against potential ransomware threats. Ransomware Shield now delivers enhanced behaviour-based detection techniques to safeguard your device, while Exploit Blocker, yet another protective layer, has been improved to cover more malicious attacks.
Always on the go – work transformed
Hybrid work implies being on the go. ESET is making multiple moves to serve the hybrid worker. This is evidenced by a new option in the consumer lineup via our venerable ESET NOD32 Antivirus, which has now been ported to ARM64 and is available for free in our beta channel.
To round out the package of protection, consider securing your mobile phone. For the vast majority of the workforce, mobile devices are at the centre of their digital ecosystems. Our mobile phones are our wallets, calendars and digital filing cabinets. Housed on them can be anything from health records to travel documents to sensitive financial details. With one type of device playing such a crucial role in our lives, it is essential that modern cybersecurity solutions are mobile compatible, and that users are protected and able to manage their security on the go.
Is your second job “home security manager”?
By ensuring our home networks are as secure as possible, we can lower the potential for home-born threats to negatively impact productivity and employment. And with research conducted by ESET showing that households often have a single family member who takes care of IT security for everyone, we’ve made some powerful adjustments for the benefit of both these and future hybrid workers.
So, in a nod to the new security environment we all live and work in, we’ve built ESET HOME, a management platform that gives users oversight of all their ESET security solutions. Now your job as ‘home security manager’ will be much easier, eliminating the need to chase down the status of individual devices. ESET HOME lets users manage all their Windows and Android devices in one single place. A user-friendly version of what IT admins use, ESET HOME provides complete visibility into the current protection status of your household’s various devices, and the status of your licences, allowing you to add, manage and share licences with family and friends. Accessible via web portal and mobile app, the platform is built for on-the-go security management.
Securing your entire household’s devices
As many organisations return to the office, parents are also dealing with kids going back to school. Often this takes place in a hybrid format, which can double the added security challenges. And, just like the IT admin at work, when children are out of the house, it becomes much trickier to keep tabs on whether they are using their devices safely – usually their smartphones. Within ESET HOME, parents can now remotely monitor (via Parental Control) their children’s online activity on their mobile devices, gaining peace of mind that they aren’t at risk. Find out more about ESET Parental Control.
Paying with confidence
Hopefully you’re out and about now… but regardless of what’s open in the real world, online shopping is more convenient than ever and making purchases online is no longer limited to inside your house. Outside your network there are additional dangers – such as insecure Wi-Fi – that raise the threat of malicious actors snooping on your payment details. Banking & Payment Protection recognises and mitigates these risks, safeguarding your financial data during online transactions.
Newly upgraded, this feature now offers the option of running a browser in secured mode by default, encrypting communications between the keyboard and the browser when accessing internet banking sites or web-based cryptocurrency wallets. Banking & Payment Protection also defends against keylogging attacks from cybercriminals attempting to steal login credentials and hack into accounts.
Manage all your passwords
Having unique, complex passwords for every account is one of the central principles of good cybersecurity, but it can be a headache to manage what often feels like an endless list of logins. To make this less of a hassle, Password Manager has been completely redesigned for improved security and ease of use. Not only does this feature store and organise your passwords seamlessly, but it can also generate strong passwords for new accounts.
Available as both a browser extension on Windows devices and an app on Android and iOS devices, Password Manager enables users to keep track of their account credentials however is most convenient for them. Its new features include support for KeePass and Microsoft Authenticator.
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