Cyber Security Awareness and Education Support for Home and Hybrid Workers

Abstract

Home and hybrid working is now increasingly commonplace in many organizations, particularly in the wake of the enforced home working faced by many during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while many organizations and workers have now embraced the opportunity, questions remain over whether security practices in the home-based and hybrid context are as robust as those within the traditional workplace. The pandemic highlighted that many organizations were unprepared in terms of related security policies and procedures, and today many still lack specific attention toward these aspects even though home-working itself has become a business norm. One of the potential challenges facing organizations seeking to understand what they should do is the varied range of advice and related sources that can be found, which can lead to relevant issues being overlooked or omitted if they were not covered in the chosen guidance. This paper seeks to examine and evidence this challenge. It does so by analyzing a series of guidance resources from commercial, governmental, and professional body sources. From these, a set of eight thematic control areas are identified, and the sources themselves are then evaluated against this new, consolidated reference point to see how closely they each match. The findings reveal that all of the consulting sources fall significantly short of being able to be considered comprehensive in their coverage of the relevant topics and the level of detail. This in turn highlights the importance of organizations adopting this more holistic view and ensuring that different types sources are consulted before determining the necessary practices and awareness needs of their home-based and hybrid workers.