Virtual Office Resource

The mobile workforce is expanding; countless companies in every country now enable their employees to work remotely and on the go. This is great for both workers and employers—there are a number of benefits to being able to work from anywhere. The flexibility created by working remotely keeps employees happy because it allows them to work when, where and how they want. A happy employee results in a productive employee, which is a good thing for companies. Businesses can also potentially save on office space if more people are working remotely. The list of benefits to both sides is endless, yet there is one major drawback to remote work that has kept many companies from embracing the mobile workforce wholeheartedly: security breaches.

Unfortunately, security issues are a common occurrence nowadays. All Internet communications rely on DNS to work, which can prove to be a problem because DNS is often not sufficiently secured, leaving it susceptible to attack. This may not be a big deal if all you do on your laptop is watch cat videos on YouTube (News - Alert) and absolutely nothing else, but security breaches can be devastating if a device is used for work purposes. Cybercriminals use DNS as a vector for data exfiltration and as a malware control point, and most security measures—firewalls, email proxies, Web proxies, etc.—don’t focus on DNS. That means that once a cybercriminal is in, they have access to all your work information, which could potentially include valuable data.

Understandably, not all companies have hopped on the mobile workforce bandwagon because of these concerns. They can’t really be blamed, but they can be helped to feel more secure. That’s where Infoblox Inc., the network control company that provides Actionable Network Intelligence, comes into play. The company announced yesterday the availability of Infoblox (News - Alert) ActiveTrust® Cloud, which provides protection for devices on or off premises, prevents DNS-based data exfiltration, automatically stops device communications with command-and-control servers, and allows rapid investigation of threats.

Most people working remotely don’t have a dedicated IT team set up in their living room, so security problems are often overlooked or not handled correctly. The ActiveTrust Cloud detects and blocks DNS-based data exfiltration using behavioral analytics; disrupts malicious DNS-based communications to C&Cs and prevents malware from propagating; stays on top of evolving malicious domains and IPs using real-time machine-readable threat intelligence curated for low false positives; offers threat investigation tools for fast analysis, using threat context to take action in minutes; brings unified management, analytics, and reporting on the premises and in the cloud; customizes policy based on business needs without DNS expertise; and provides visibility and network context around infections and compromised devices on or off the premises.

Infoblox is proud to offer a solution that keeps mobile workers and company data safe, no matter where they are. “Today’s workforce is increasingly mobile and the number of employees working from remote locations is rising,” said Scott Fulton, executive vice president of products at Infoblox. “Remote and branch offices often don’t have the local IT resources to manage security infrastructure and end up compromising on their security posture. Infoblox offers protection for these remote users and branch office users with our easy to use SaaS (News - Alert) service without the need to deploy infrastructure.”