While transitioning work to the new home office edge was initially a response to the pandemic, it is now predicted to be an ongoing trend. However, besides the many advantages that a work from home office model can provide, it also introduces many new cybersecurity challenges. The biggest of these is that home offices are often poorly secured. In addition to being the new hub for the home worker, a home network also includes a wide variety of other devices. These include the devices of family members who use the home network to browse and stream content, and a host of connected IoT devices, ranging from entertainment systems to smart appliances to WiFi routers. And many of these devices can be unpatched and unprotected.
Complicating things further, many of these home offices were built quickly and were initially thought to be a temporary solution. But a significant number of corporations still do not have a timeframe for safely returning to the office or have now decided to make these home offices permanent. As a result, the percentage of people working from home is expected to double in 2021, making secure, enterprise-grade connectivity a must-have for IT managers who have to provision an effective remote workforce. Those IT managers now need to plan for a permanent solution that empowers a significant portion of their workforce to work effectively from their homes, at least part of the time, while protecting the organizations from the growing cybersecurity threats targeting home networks and remote workers.
At the same time, these employees must also have access to all of the capabilities they enjoy in the office, including secure and reliable access to critical business applications, such as streaming teleconferencing and online productivity tools. This means they need fast, reliable, and secure connectivity in their homes to ensure enterprise-grade security and user experience.
Work from Home: Fortinet and Linksys to Deliver Security-driven Networking
When organizations implement telework at scale, cyber criminals leap at the opportunity to exploit the numerous security gaps that arise. Security-driven networking—a strategy that converges networking and security across the connected environment, from the core, into the cloud, and to the branch and remote workers—enables organizations to see and defend today’s highly dynamic environments while preserving an excellent user experience.
To achieve this, security must continue to adapt to changing network demands. This is why Fortinet and Linksys, global leaders in their respective fields, have announced a new strategic alliance. As part of this alliance, Fortinet has made a strategic investment of $75M in Linksys, which provides leading and next-generation router connectivity solutions to consumers and businesses worldwide. In addition, Fortinet will appoint a representative to the Linksys Board of Directors.
Fortinet and Linksys
To compete effectively in today’s digital world, the enterprise-grade security and high-performance connectivity enjoyed across today’s corporate edges, including the LAN, WAN, data center, and cloud, must now be extended to mobile end-users, IoT devices, and home offices. Our strategic alliance with Linksys will deliver enterprise-grade performance and security to WFH networks and deliver the most secure, reliable network connectivity and performance on the market, keeping organizations agile, safe, and productive.
