Keep Calm and Carry on with Cybersecurity @Home: A Framework for Securing Homeworking IT Environment

Abstract

For the first time in modern history, businesses had to suddenly facilitate homeworking for a large proportion, if not all, of their workforce because of COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that employees access sensitive corporate data from non-corporate networks opens the door wide for many cybersecurity risks that could result in data loss, breaches and consequently huge financial loss. Since the move was sudden, most businesses, especially small ones, did not have the time to assess their homeworking cybersecurity requirements. This paper aims to bridge this gap and propose a multi-layered framework that is focused on businesses' requirements to guide cybersecurity @home activities. The framework can be also beneficial for businesses that currently have homeworking cybersecurity policies to assess their compliance with the framework and enrich it.