The global pandemic and social distancing measures have redefined the office for many people. Industries that never would have considered allowing their office employees to work from home were forced to rethink decades of business as usual.

This change has also brought new technology needs. Since these businesses had built technology infrastructures that relied on traditional network and application architecture, a shift had to occur. Suddenly, IT departments were dealing with overloaded VPNs or having to deploy a VPN that they never had to maintain before. Compound that with the fact that users are now accessing company resources from networks or assets that corporate IT has no control over, that most home routers are still vulnerable to exploitation and that, in many cases, the network gates were flung open in the name of productivity ― it’s enough to give any CISO an ulcer.

So how can companies mitigate these risks? Now that everyone is settling into a routine and we’re adjusting to this “new normal,” it’s an ideal time to reach out to your users and talk about security.

The sudden shutdown of physical offices across the country this spring has accelerated many organizations’ journeys down the digital transformation path. Companies that had previously been reluctant to adopt tools such as videoconferencing and cloud collaboration rolled those solutions out to users in a rush as they scrambled to enable remote work. Because they deployed so many solutions in such a short period of time, most organizations will want to undertake some sort of security assessment to be sure they haven’t opened themselves up to new vulnerabilities. But this moment also presents an opportunity for organizations to provide a permanent boost to their cybersecurity practices through ongoing engagements.

Here are three examples of CDW’s high-value cybersecurity offerings.

Organizations have long understood the importance of securing their supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks and industrial control systems (ICS) from outside threats.

In recent years, these systems have become increasingly interconnected with IT systems and IoT networks, enabling organizations to take advantage of greater automation and better data analytics. But these improvements make connected systems a bigger target for cybercriminals. Here are three measures organizations should take to assess — and improve — the security measures surrounding their SCADA systems.

The decennial U.S. census is about to begin. The work of the census provides crucial information for government agencies, academic researchers and private businesses, but it also opens the door for cybercriminals seeking to exploit the widespread publicity around the census to conduct malicious attacks. We will inevitably witness social engineering attacks from individuals pretending to be associated with the census asking for Social Security numbers, passwords and other sensitive personally identifiable information.

Organizations need to prepare themselves for these inevitable attacks and ensure that their employees don’t fall for scams that accidentally compromise sensitive information.

In July 2018, CDW rolled out the third iteration of our Threat Check service. Since that version of the service rolled out, we’ve conducted hundreds of these assessments across a wide variety of companies and industries. In every case, we were able to provide our customers with new insights into the state of their cybersecurity…

In years past, many organizations took a passive approach to cybersecurity. They’d sit back and wait for something bad to happen, then react to it. That approach is no longer acceptable for just about any organization. If you think your organization isn’t a target or that it doesn’t have anything that cybercriminals want, you’re wrong….