Welcome to 2020 – the year when more businesses than ever before transitioned their employees to remote working. The novel virus Covid-19 changed the workforce for the better and maybe for the worse.
Although many businesses had to adapt right away, learning how to offer your employees the option to work remotely adds a significant boost to the appeal of the company. Existing and future employees enjoy the opportunity to work somewhere other than the office due to reasons like childcare and being on the road frequently.
The downfall of remote working is the increased security risk. When working at the office, all the employees are on one secured network. However, once they step outside of the office, they must access cloud services through possibly open networks to continue working. This can put valuable data at risk.
2020 statistics show that outsiders caused 70 percent of breaches, and 86 percent of breaches were financially motivated—roughly 28 percent of data breaches involved small businesses.
It’s time to step up your security to ensure all devices can safely access your company’s network. The following four strategies will get you started.
Ensure You Have Security Across All Devices
Your network security system also has to adapt to the changes with remote workers. That’s because not every employee will do their work on a desktop or a laptop. With the ability to do basically anything on a mobile phone, it’s easy for employees to check emails and access data from their smartphone.
Having remote access solutions protecting all devices is more crucial than ever. The company’s system needs to protect every device someone may use to do their job. Using a remote access VPN allows employees to link into the network servers with ease and protection.
Have Additional Ways of Authentication and Authorization
Many cloud-based networks will allow you to specify who has access to what information. Just because you have an employee working remotely, that doesn’t have to mean they can now access anything on the network. Ensure that every employee has the proper authorization level to do their job without anything more.
Having multi-factor authentication is another step to ensure the security of the company’s network. Merely using a password isn’t always enough, especially is someone uses a basic password that’s easy to guess.
Ensure All Critical Systems and Data Are Backed Up
Having backups of basically everything important to your business is not just a smart business move, but it’s an essential one for beefing up your security. Whether it’s from a hacker crippling the system or a glitch in the network, having those backups ensure you don’t lose precious data.
Offer Cybersecurity Training
If remote working is new for your business, offer cybersecurity training for your staff. Rather than focusing only on being reactive, be proactive and include those who are working remotely. Offer training that helps employees recognize phishing scams and possible virus links on particular websites and emails.
Although no one wants it to happen, have a plan during a possible data breach. It’s best to be fully prepared for any possible situation, rather than scrambling trying to learn as you go.