69% of PH firms tech up for remote work-study

MANILA  -Local companies are fortifying their cyber defenses to support remote working, which has become a preference for many employees since the onset of the pandemic that barred mobility, according to an enterprise cloud provider.

Trend Micro Philippines country manager Ian Felipe, in an interview with the Inquirer, said that organizations “showed improvement in their cyber preparedness levels” as “robust cybersecurity enables Filipino employees to work from anywhere securely and efficiently.”

In its recent study, the technology company revealed that 78 percent of local respondents claimed that allowing remote working has become important in retaining talents.

READ: Most PH job seekers now prefer hybrid, remote work setup

Majority or 69 percent said “their current cybersecurity policies enable employees to have more freedom to work from anywhere.”

The rise of hybrid work setups, however, also widened the attack surface for hackers.

Among the digital threats targeting enterprises is business email compromise, a form of cyberattack whereby hackers send emails embedded with suspicious links to business emails of company employees. It seeks to trick employees into providing access to the corporate IT system. While Felipe cited improvements, he admitted that more needs to be done given the rapidly changing cyberthreat landscape.

“To address new complexities arising from an expanding attack surface, security teams need to bolster their capabilities in proactive attack surface risk management,” he explained.

READ: Use unified cybersecurity platform, PH firms urged

Holistic strategy

As such, he said companies should implement a holistic cybersecurity strategy, which focuses on reducing cyber risks and improving visibility of networks.

Felipe explained, however, that putting in place technology to beef up cybersecurity is not enough, raising the need to also equip the employees with the knowledge they need so as not to fall victim to such threats.

“Hence, beyond investing in the right technology and implementing the right processes, it is also imperative to drive a security-first mindset and culture among employees in the organizations,” he said.

Last year, the company launched Trend Micro One, a unified cybersecurity platform providing end-to-end solutions for enterprises’ cloud platform, emails and network, among others.

Felipe said that the digital solution was “designed to help businesses discover the ever-changing attack surface, assess and prioritize the most pressing risks and vulnerabilities and subsequently mitigate them.”

The platform also allows 24/7 monitoring of a company’s network and enhanced cyberthreat detection.

In rolling this out, Trend Micro is targeting the government, banking and manufacturing sectors given the huge amount of data they are handling. INQ