Working from home because of coronavirus? Don’t give your company a different kind of virus

Working from home because of coronavirus? Don’t give your company a different kind of virus

As millions of workers log into work from home to avoid the spread of COVID-19, there’s the risk that they could increase the chance of exposure to another kind of virus, the kind that can lock up corporate networks.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 a pandemic, a move that will surely boost the number of companies asking employees to work from home. The number of companies that have made that move has grown quickly in the past week, with Alphabet Inc.’s US:GOOG US:GOOGL Google encouraging its 119,000 North American employees to work from home, if possible, on Tuesday.

Read: Coronavirus has prompted these tech companies to ask employees to work from home

Chenxi Wang, the managing partner at Rain Capital and a former Forrester Research analyst, told MarketWatch that companies like Google are well-prepared for such contingencies as they’ve long had a culture of remote working. Other companies, especially ones that rely heavily on on-premise network security protocols, may not have it as easy.

“For a more traditional company,” Wang said, “this change is going to be difficult because what they have done is they’ve relaxed security of devices within the perimeter, and now this device has to be taken out of the perimeter [and is] sitting in somebody’s house.”

Yaniv Balmas, head of cyber research at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. US:CHKP , told MarketWatch that cyberattackers seeking to take advantage of an influx of employees working from home for the first time would likely pivot to focusing on online services that are being used more than usual. MORE