How Browser Isolation Can Keep Remote Workers Safe

Since workers began ‘temporarily’ working from home a year ago, organizations have learned a lot. They have seen the many benefits that come along with allowing employees to work from home, such as increased well-being and productivity.

Organizations have become more comfortable with the idea of employees working from home, and so it seems likely that a lot of organizations will continue to facilitate home working even after it is no longer a social necessity. However, if employees are to work from home more, organizations need to be mindful of the increased Cybersecurity risks that this poses.

What is browser isolation?

One of the greatest risks to Cybersecurity is the web browser. Your web browser contains your entire browsing history, it is where you enter secure passwords and user names and it is where you enter your payment information.

Remote workers are increasingly using their browsers to remotely access sensitive company information, which means that if their browser is compromised then the information that they are accessing could be, too.

Remote browser isolation allows employees to safely access information because the remote browser where the code is actually running is totally separate from both the home computer and the business network. The remote browser runs the code and all that is returned to the endpoint (in this case the remote worker’s computer) is the harmless pixels that make images and text. This means that if any malicious code is encountered, it cannot do any harm.

Help to support rushed cybersecurity solutions

When people began remote working just over a year ago, it was not planned. Employers rushed to find stop-gap solutions to allow as many people as possible to continue working, and as with so many stop-gap solutions they have remained in place and never been revisited.

Around 80% of people are working from home on their own laptops, many of which are not encrypted and do not have adequate virus protection. This exposes company data and puts it at risk of a breach.

If employees working on their own laptops can access sensitive company data through a remote browser, it means that both their laptops and the company information that they are working on are protected against threats.

This protection is not dependent on predicting hacker behavior like standard anti-virus software, which means that it will keep your users and your business safe even if you have not been able to roll out updates.

Protection against issues caused by employee burnout

There is a greater security risk to remote workers at the moment particularly because they are becoming increasingly burnt out from remote working.

This means that they are more likely to take risks with password security or to fall victim to phishing scams. Using browser isolation protects against mistakes caused by burnout because even if someone were to click a link that they should not, the malicious code would not be running on their machine or on the company network and therefore could not do any damage or put any sensitive information at risk.