{"id":13495,"date":"2025-11-02T05:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T05:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.realvnc.com\/?post_type=blog&p=13495"},"modified":"2026-10-13T05:31:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T04:31:37","slug":"remote-access-security-risks","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.realvnc.com\/en\/blog\/remote-access-security-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Remote Access Security Risks That Require a Unified Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Remember how we all used to hear about the \u201cdigital transformation\u201d and how your business needs to plan for it and make the jump in order to remain competitive?  In hindsight, the pandemic made every business take some or all of the transformational steps needed \u2013 according to Deloitte<\/a>, just over half of organizations have restructured their organization since the beginning of the pandemic, with nearly two-thirds (63%) focusing on digital transformation. And, as you\u2019re very aware, part of this transformation involved the supporting of a remote or hybrid workforce \u2013 which includes a remote access strategy. <\/p>\n

But part of the challenge with the last two years is that much of your work of ensuring users can remotely access organizational resources was likely done ad hoc, piecing together solutions as the business shifted to the cloud, made acquisitions, opened new offices, and responded to the specific operational needs of your remote workforce.<\/p>\n

The result is a disparate set of remote access methods and solutions across the entirety of the organization, that creates significant business risk.  That risk can only truly be addressed by unifying your remote access<\/a>. This includes a convoluted mix of corporate and personal devices, VPNs, remote desktop software, desktop virtualization, and internally and externally based remote sessions.  Add to this the fact that organizations may have subsidiaries \u2013 each with their own version of the aforementioned \u201cmix\u201d, along with their own policies, business requirements, and cybersecurity needs. In the end, your organization as a whole is prone to remote access risk from a number of directions, at varying levels, while lacking visibility into every remote access interaction and complete control over the use of remote access.<\/p>\n

The answer to this problem is to unify your organization\u2019s remote access strategy and execution, standardizing on a single remote access solution to address three key organizational risks.<\/p>\n

1. Increased Cybersecurity Risk<\/h2>\n

Because most remote access implementations were done with getting the business operational in mind first, you\u2019ve likely inherited the current day iteration of that setup and are working now towards ensuring that it not only meets the business\u2019 productivity needs but also its cybersecurity requirements.<\/p>\n

Your organization\u2019s method of remote access may be increasing cyber risk for the organization. If you\u2019re simply using, say, RDP, or some other remote access solution exposed to the Internet, without some additional security controls like MFA, you\u2019re definitely<\/em> increasing cyber risk.  While your remote access is used to aid both external and internal users to legitimately access internal endpoints and systems, remote access compromise has been tied with phishing as the primary attack vector in ransomware attacks<\/a> for the last two years, with each of them fluctuating between the top spot over that same timeframe.  <\/p>\n

In addition, having a remote workforce isn\u2019t helping your cybersecurity risk either. Just above three-quarters (77%) of IT leaders have seen an increase in security compromises since going remote 2 years ago<\/a>, citing a continued significant risk to the organization. When remote work is a factor in a data breach, the average cost of the breach increases in conjunction with the percent of the workforce working remotely<\/a> \u2013 by as much as 20% higher than data breaches where remote work isn\u2019t a factor.<\/p>\n

Part of the equation is likely the use of a personal device (read: a device with less cyber protection that the organization mandates for corporate devices) connecting to the corporate network or its resources on the web via a VPN or, even worse, directly connecting to a remote connection. <\/p>\n

The other part of the equation is the wide range of solutions and tools used to meet the varying remote access needs \u2013 each with its own sets of security features that may or may not be in use, as well as the absence of a single configuration that ensures the correct level of implemented security to protect the organization from attack and\/or misuse.<\/p>\n

Reducing the Risk with Unified Remote Access<\/h3>\n

A single remote access solution addresses so many cybersecurity risks, providing it has the right features to address the various requirements for each location, business unit, subsidiary, etc. within the organization. Some of these features would include:<\/p>\n