Without the security protections that office systems offer, firms are substantially more vulnerable to cyber attacks in today’s remote work environment, which places a larger dependence on technology. Your attack surface has dramatically broadened as a result of so much data being exchanged online.
The fact that we perform the majority of our business online is the most obvious source of concern. Simply put, if it’s on the Internet, it may be hacked by a cyber criminal. Documents stored in the cloud, emails with attachments, instant messaging clients, and third-party services are all vulnerable.
Nonetheless, for better or worse, remote working is here to stay because the benefits are simply too appealing. In this article we’ll go over some helpful tips for mitigating some of the most common security risks of remote working.
Data being kept on employee devices instead of on secure servers
The COVID-19 epidemic caused enormous disruption throughout the world, accelerating the work-from-home culture and, in many cases, forcing employees to use personal devices to access work-related apps.
When drafting your remote work data protection policy, remember to take employee departures into account. What happens to corporate data that may be saved on an employee’s device after they leave the organization?
You should definitely consider a secure server solution such as Triofox that gives you much better control over sensitive company data, such as limiting files from being downloaded off the cloud onto personal desktops.
Insecure VPN connections
To authenticate the connection, most business VPN systems include a certificate in the user profile or connection. This is done independently of the authentication that users must supply via credentials and another kind of two-factor authentication in order to establish a secure connection.
The certificate’s and credentials’ security won’t help much because the organization’s security upkeep is only as good as the certificate’s and credentials’ security. Cybercriminals may use these to start their own connections or even hijack remote employee sessions, making them a potential target for them.
Sensitive data and apps may be protected using highly secure virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments and bastion hosts to proxy the connection.
Provide your staff with a company-owned laptop that can be used as a conventional desktop and can even be monitored to reduce risk.
Get IT staff experienced in remote troubleshooting
IT security for home employees is one of the many issues that firms will have to address as they prepare for life after a pandemic.
Remote employees rely on their home network hardware, which creates a variety of security vulnerabilities. And you’d better hope they have training in security, because your IT personnel will only be able to help them so much if they run into issues.
For their PCs, the majority of home users are local administrators. They seldom create additional ordinary user accounts for daily use. As a result, viruses that can exploit them are more likely to infect them.
As a result, most malware requires administrator privileges to infect a computer, yet most home users do not restrict their access for the sake of convenience. The older a home computer’s operating system becomes, the more vulnerable it is to malware that requires administrator access to execute.
Optimize video conferences for security
To interact at a distance and improve remote employee engagement, companies have come to rely on video conferencing. The host should switch on the “lock meeting” function to prevent undesirable or uninvited guests from joining video conversations.
A password-protected meeting can be set up by the organizer. In these situations, the host must make certain that the password is shared with all invited visitors.
The organizer should verify content sharing settings to prevent unauthorized users from downloading content during a video conference session. They may be adjusted to provide access to meeting information to all participants or just certain individuals.
