Episode 1: Cybersecurity at the Enterprise Forefront: What’s Different this Time?

Over the course of a few short weeks in early 2020, business as we know it changed. As lockdowns caused by COVID-19 spread worldwide, organizations scrambled to keep the lights on.  Working from home was the only way to keep business rolling.  The thing is, connecting and supporting employees from home meant that the traditional perimeter for security  — Which had already been eroding under pressure from the work-at-home trend — was now obsolete.

“I think when the pandemic hit, focus was on making the remote workforce as productive as possible and as fast as possible,” says Comcast Business’s Shena Seneca Tharnish, VP Cyber Security.

Once established, enterprise businesses began rethinking their cybersecurity approach, Tharnish says,  because previous architectures that enabled security defenses in datacenters and in branch offices were being bypassed. “When this happens, securing the network perimeter is not good enough and enterprises must shift to the endpoint or to wherever the edge has expanded to.”