Remote work raises cyber security risk

Large companies feel they are facing considerable information security risks, and companies are increasingly making contingencies for these risks, according to the findings of the OP’s annual survey of large corporations.

Last year, society as a whole took a leap forward in the digital realm, sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, as many companies rapidly switched to remote working, said OP in a press release.

According to Statistics Finland’s Labour Force Survey, the proportion of people regularly working from home almost doubled last year.

The new working arrangements also gave rise to cyber security risks for large corporations. The threats include malware, data breaches, and denial of service attacks.

In OP’s survey of large corporations, as many as four-fifths of the respondent companies estimated that their cyber risks had increased in 2020 due to decentralised working patterns.

About 87 per cent of the respondending companies to the survey judged their information security risks to be high, up from 57 per cent in 2014.

“Information security risks are invisible, which makes them hard to detect. On the other hand, cyber security has been discussed more widely in the public domain, which raises awareness of the topic. Remote work has introduced a number of cyber security challenges. The risks include working on unprotected networks or on public premises, as well as the use of employees’ own devices,” said Pohjola Insurance CEO Olli Lehtilä.

Special care must be taken to ensure that information security is up to date and up to standard. The National Cyber Security Centre has stated that it processed a record number of information security incidents last year. In particular, ransomware targeting large corporations and other organisations has become more prevalent in recent years.

Among the respondents to the survey of large corporations, the level of contingency planning is now very high: nearly 93 per cent of large corporations reported that they had made preparations for risks related to information security and cyber security.

A total of 240 people from 161 large corporations based or operating in Finland responded to the survey, particularly CEOs, CFOs, and executive vice presidents. The data was collected in autumn 2020.