I have been admiring how the community has been coming together to help one another during these testing times.

In Business, I have seen a real mixture of complete closures, companies laying off staff to ensure their survival, Business as usual for key workers, and many companies implementing full remote working. The latter of those business decisions has been weighing on my mind over the last couple of weeks.

I am sure many businesses already had mechanisms in place to facilitate some element of their workforce working remotely. But the whole workforce? It is not very likely.

In these testing times, the move to remote working brings security challenges. How can we protect our organisations from the Cyber Security threat landscape when our users are now the wrong side of our traditional perimeter?

Company-owned assets will typically be protected using the very same technology utilised on-premise. The question I have been asking myself is, did organisations have enough time to ensure that every remote worker had a company managed asset before the government issued guidance to work from home? If you, like I, have tried to buy a laptop of a reasonable specification in the last week; I suspect the answer to that question is likely a resounding no.

If organisations have been purchasing many more devices to facilitate the escalation of remote workers, did they have enough licenses in reserve for typical Cyber Security solutions like End Point Protection? Or, if they have opted to allow users to utilise their personal devices in a BYOD fashion, have they been able to ensure the security of these devices before granting them access to company resources, or even the corporate network? I suspect the answer to that question is likely no too.

Given the procurement process in many organisations when buying new licenses/technology is slow at the best of times, have companies been able to acquire the tools/licenses they need to ensure their remote workforce is protected?

Recently, many vendors have offered some degree of assistance or free access to their products or services. Cyber Vigilance's partner for next-generation autonomous EDR, SentinelOne announced free access to its Core technology. Until now, I had not seen the benefit of such an offer to the market who's primary focus right now is their survival by enabling their remote workforce as quickly as possible. Any sniff that a vendor might be trying to sell to them in such a crisis has generally resulted in backlash. By now, however, we should realise that security is not a luxury and must be a factor in all decisions we take as IT professionals. Crisis or otherwise.

With the above in mind, I thought it prudent to share the revelation I had (I may have been slow on the uptake here). If your organisation has been unable to acquire the necessary licensing required to secure your remote worker's endpoints during this unprecedented time, why not take advantage of SentinelOne's offer of free fully cloud-managed endpoint protection for Windows, Mac and Linux? If you are concerned that you don't have the skills to manage the platform, or you feel having yet another platform to manage is an operational headache, why not let Cyber Vigilance manage this for you, for free, for the duration SentinelOne makes this offer available?

Are you being sold to, I am afraid so. SentinelOne wants you to realise what a dreamboat their product is. We at Cyber Vigilance also want the opportunity to show you how technically proficient and proactive we are. For me, there is an opportunity here for a mutually beneficial activity with no obligation to purchase anything at the end.

If you are interested, fill out the form here and mention in the comments that you wish to enrol on SentinelOne's COVID-19 free platform access offering.

Finally, putting Business aside, I hope that you and your respective families remain safe during this pandemic. Stay safe, physically, mentally and digitally.

‍