Crisis looms as dust storm poses security headache for Sydney businesses

Australian businesses would be left vulnerable as employees stay at home amid severe weather warnings across Sydney today, according to RSA, the Security Division of EMC.

Although many businesses have revised their risk analysis strategies in recent months, lax or non-existing security may prohibit large numbers of employees from remote working.

Mark Pullen, ANZ country manager at RSA, said IT departments could be overwhelmed by having to secure a predominantly remote workforce.

“Widespread ‘stay aways’ in a major city like Sydney could be a security nightmare for large corporations,” said Pullen. “Even businesses that already have remote working in place could be extremely vulnerable after a day like today, let alone those which have only partial infrastructure in place.”

In many organisations it is only users who work outside of the firewall on a consistent basis that are issued hardware or software authenticators. Users that work inside the firewall may not have tokens. In the event that a user may require remote access, IT simply issues a token to the individual.

“Often unexpectedly, large numbers of users may have to access the VPN or web mail portal. This creates a ‘crisis within a crisis’ as IT staff - who themselves may not be able to make it into the office - now must scramble to support these users,” Pullen said. 

According to Pullen, “On-demand tokens can now be issued to select departments, or the entire organisation - no matter where they are based”.