Gone are the days where bosses could simply walk by an employee’s desk and peek at their computer screen to see if they were on task. At the end of last year, 45% of full-time employees worked from home at least part of the time, and many want to keep it that way. Enter employee monitoring, not-so-affectionally known as “bossware.” It’s software that companies install to better understand what it is their employees are doing all day.

Most knowledge-economy workplaces are embracing the remote future of work. The question for these leaders is how to manage a workforce that may physically congregate in the office only once or twice a week, if ever. According to Gallup, as many as two-thirds of white-collar U.S. employees worked exclusively from home during the pandemic, a massive shift that will shape workplace culture for years to come.

The new era of remote work launched by COVID has given millions of employees the ability to work on their own terms and spend more time with their families. Unfortunately, remote work also comes with certain security risks, as organizations now need to guard against increased exposure to cybersecurity concerns with little physical oversight. But embracing remote work does not need to mean handing employees’ laptops with sensitive company information and hoping all goes well.

This is the important question that Veriato Head of Product & Technology, Jay Godse asks in his new article, published this week. With so many employees working from home, it’s hard for CISOs, managers and HR leaders to know what they are doing, and that creates risk. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Threats to the company are much harder to spot when people are working at home.

Every employee is hired to do a job, but every employee also represents potential risk to their company. In the past year, 68% of employers have noted an increase in insider attacks. The top attacks include fraud, monetary gain and IP theft and cost companies millions of dollars. One major reason for an increase in insider risk in the past year is remote work. Not only are people outside of their manager’s physical view, they are often working outside of their company’s network.

The rising adoption of digital processes in manufacturing has fundamentally changed how this sector does business. The increased reliance on digitization and network connectivity has sharpened the risks of company data exfiltration, intellectual property damages, and more, especially those stemming from insiders. Insider threat actors operate from a position of trust that allows them to circumvent security and evade detection for months, if not years.