IT Essentials: New home, same old security

I put last week's bank holiday to great use. Living by the sea means every sunny weekend is an excuse to break out a deckchair and replace my blood with ice cream and doughnuts. The prospect of doing so was certainly attractive. Instead, I moved house.

Anyone who's been through the process can relate to the stress of moving. You spend days carefully packing years of your life into what will turn out to be only half as many boxes as you actually need. Eventually, you get so frustrated that you throw things into any receptacle that still has space - resulting in pulling a router and three toothbrushes from a box labelled 'Dog toys, misc.' three weeks later.

Three weeks might be optimistic. You can't unpack until you have furniture, and you can't put your furniture out until you've redecorated. Cue countless trips to B&Q after you find the brushes and rollers you faithfully and carefully preserved after your last move have dried into a crusty mess, and the first three tins of paint you've bought are just the wrong shade of white.

And then, just when you think you're done, you remember you need to change all the door locks, install a home security system and buy a mastiff just in case Bernard at Number 10 turns out to be a sociopath.

After spending all that time, money and effort to preserve and protect our physical goods, why don't we give the same weight to our digital ones?

I'm not talking about the laptop you leave on your desk in front of a window, but your internet infrastructure and data itself.

This has been a perennial problem since remote and hybrid working exploded in 2020. Shared devices, unsecured WiFi and a proliferation of shadow IT mean protecting users is more difficult than ever.

What's worse is that building a strong wall, like the office firewall, isn't enough to overcome these challenges by itself. The threats are either already inside the perimeter or can easily bypass it.

It seems like an insurmountable challenge, especially at a company-wide scale, but in fact there's plenty IT leaders can do to optimise hybrid working and keep people secure, with relatively minimal effort. We'll be doing a deep dive into the topic at the Cybersecurity Festival next week, and I urge anyone with an interest to register and attend - for free.

I might even pick up some tips before I go back to picking between Daffodil White, Apricot White and Almond White.

Click here to register for the Cybersecurity Festival. Computing is paying for travel, accommodation and food - all you need to do is turn up.