Most security experts, IT workers and leaders understand that the pandemic brought a decline in business and digital safety. A big part of that is the rush to get set up at home and establish remote work security. But why, exactly? It turns out that surprising factors degraded the security of the remote workforce.

Let’s start with the most obvious: remote work security. The pandemic ushered in a sudden and unplanned experiment with remote work at scale. First, employees stopped working in physically secure locations inside firewalls with approved devices and started working from home.