Kaspersky delivers tool for protecting remote workforces and highlighting shadow IT

The new edition of Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud gives businesses more visibility over shadow IT. With the new cloud discovery feature, an IT administrator can safeguard compliance to corporate security policies by controlling the unauthorized use of potentially unsecured applications and sites by employees. The control over cloud services helps organizations minimize the risk of corporate data being exposed to a breach, while allowing employees to work from anywhere.

Almost every employee (99%) would sometimes like to work remotely, according to the “State of Remote Work” report. The reality shows that this “would like” may easily turn into “have to”. In March 2020 many industry leading businesses such as General Motors, Apple, JP Morgan, not to mention smaller businesses all over the world, have moved their employees to home offices because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In such a scenario, it becomes even more important for administrators to ensure both corporate and employee data remains secure and private. The use of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) helps businesses and employees be agile, work remotely and stay tuned even if they can’t be in the office.

But along with authorized corporate services, employees can choose to use other applications through their own initiative or just mix corporate and personal habits – generating what is known as shadow IT. Whether it is messengers, file sharing services or any kind of small tools for work or even personal needs on corporate devices, the level of security in such applications can be obscure, to say the least. Even if they are used with good intentions without approval from IT departments, doing so can still potentially lead to compromising corporate data or even a malware infection which would threaten an organization’s reputation.

Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud now can help IT administrators, to maintain more transparency over corporate IT and ensure that only trusted cloud services are used within their organization. The cloud discovery feature allows them to establish the list of authorized cloud services that meet corporate security policies, and to ensure following this list is adhered to.

The data about the used categories of services and dedicated applications is visible in a dashboard where an administrator can tune the access to them for different user profiles, setting privileges for different groups of users according to their working needs.

In addition, to help organizations keep their cloud email inboxes and collaboration tools safe, Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud now includes Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365. Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365 protects all Microsoft Office 365 applications including Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online and ensures secure file sharing through Microsoft Teams.

Protection from email threats is enabled through a neural network-based anti-phishing engine that uses more than 1,000 criteria to detect phishing emails, as well as malicious URL database, anti-spoofing, and prevention of business email compromise. Also, scanning of files uploaded into SharePoint Online, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams ensures they don’t contain malware and it doesn’t spread across corporate endpoints.

“Remote working may naturally become the only way to keep business operations moving for more and more companies, during these turbulent times. This means extra challenges for those who administrate IT and ensure cybersecurity within their company — because they need to somehow control shadow IT so it doesn’t harm corporate data and doesn’t expose a business to cyberthreats. There is no way to just easily stop this. Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud arms businesses with the necessary tool to take control, along with proven endpoint and Microsoft Office 365 protection all in one,” says Sergey Martsynkyan, Head of B2B Product Marketing, Kaspersky.