Practical Cyber Security Tips For Remote Working

Remote work gives employees the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world. This location flexibility is a primary advantage that remote companies offer. However, the concerns for data security are huge and getting bigger by the year as telecommuting becomes standard practice.

For example, remote workers may connect to public and unsecured Wi-Fi networks or even move the company’s confidential information to public locations. These and other practices by remote workers put the company at the risk of a data breach.

A popular opinion shared among company executives is that remote employees increase the possibility of a data breach on the company. Therefore, both executives and employees must be accountable and responsible for protecting the company’s information. 

One of the first things that company executives must do to protect their data and make sure everyone is responsible for data security is to educate their employees. It is also important to initiate procedures and practices that strengthen the organization’s data security. Remote workers also have to prioritize these cybersecurity practices and their data security education and commit to these measures.      

As a business owner or company executive with remote workers, there are several ways to maintain your company’s cybersecurity. Here are a few steps. 

Reassess Your Company’s Risks

Your company’s network faces new vulnerabilities and challenges with remote workers than on-site workers. A cybersecurity strategy that is efficient and effective for on-site workers will not work for a remote workforce. So, you must reassess your company’s risks and determine the things that you need to change. Some of the things to reassess are:    

• Reassess the access of remote workers to files that are not required for their job responsibilities. 
• Check the weak password requirements
• Ensures that workers do not use work-related devices when accessing non-work-related websites. 
• Ensure that workers adequately protect their personal devices. 
•  Avoid unprotected endpoints
• Prohibit remote workers from sharing their devices with friends and family.
• Ensure that employees are not using outdated software.
• Ensure employees install patches and updates. 

These are vulnerabilities that are covered more easily when you have on-site employees. Still, if your company works remotely, you need to reassess these vulnerabilities with your workforce consistently. That is how you protect your company against a security breach. 

Disable External Drives

One of the popular vehicles that hackers and malicious actors use to breach an individual - and by extension an organisation’s data security - is by using USB thumb drives to install malware into the system. These cyber criminals install malware into 60 or 30 thumb drives and distribute them in a way that an unsuspecting person can pick them up thinking it is theirs and plug it into their device. As you can tell, the end of that would be catastrophic. 

However, cloud storage solutions have become so advanced that it has relegated all types of external drives,  - including USB - which hackers rely on. Cloud storage ensures that you no longer have to use these potential malicious motors and provides more safety.

So, unless your employees are videographers or photographers, make sure to prohibit the use of external drives with work devices. 

Use Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication helps to secure your data by ensuring that the user’s identity is confirmed first by asking for the username and password and secondly by requiring secondary information such as pin sent to their phone number or their answer to a secret question. 

Username and password can be compromised. So 2FA gives the person a second chance of confirming they have not been compromised. Hence, it offers an extra layer of security. With this, organizations with remote workers can feel more secure when it is not enough to have a password anymore. 

You could take it further by requiring additional verification like the user’s biometrics such as fingerprint, retina, or voice recognition. Of course, this is more expensive and more complex, but it is a solid choice for your organisation’s security. 

Make Sure Employees Can Recognize Signs Of A Potential Breach 

The earlier your security team discovers a breach, the lesser the damage done. So, your employees must be trained in cybersecurity enough to recognize the signs of a potential security breach and report to the security team. 

Some of the things your remote workers must note are:

• Anti-malware software alert indicating the presence of malware or virus.
• Sudden and significant performance decrease.
•  A sudden increase in pop-ups and spam.
• Default search engine or new homepage expectedly comes up.
• Frequent error messages

Conclusion 

The procedures and processes that are effective for on-site companies may not work for your remote company, so you need to put in more work to maintain your security. 

Charlie Svensson is a skilled content writer and blogger at Best Essays.   

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