Top Tips for Staying Secure When Working from Home
Working remotely has become more widespread ever since the pandemic. It was so beneficial that experts predict working from home will remain prevalent across various industries even after the pandemic.
OWL Labs reported that nearly 52 percent of employees work from home at least one day a week. Additionally, almost 4.7 million employees in the US work from home more than half the time.
Working remotely is definitely beneficial, but it comes with its fair share of challenges, especially when it comes to security. Newer threats are emerging every day with the potential to result in financial loss. For this reason, it is essential to pay serious consideration to home cybersecurity. By following the best practices, you will be able to identify most cybersecurity threats easily when your employees work from home.
#1 – Use Antivirus and Internet Security Software
Perhaps investing in a comprehensive antivirus suite is one of the most efficient security measures for you and your employees. Various sources suggest that cybercrime could cause estimated damage of $1.5 billion annually to businesses worldwide. And this number is only going to increase as hackers try to exploit people’s home internet networks and business VPNs to access sensitive files.
Such attacks can be threatening for your business and your employees and could result in ransomware attacks, malware, DDoS attacks, spyware, and other types of breaches.
Antivirus suites offer automatic remote work security against a wide array of threats, including malware, spyware, viruses, zero-day attacks, trojans, worms, and phishing scams. Other than fending off online security threats, comprehensive antivirus suites also automatically update themselves to stay capable of recognizing new and emerging security threats.
#2 – Ensure the Passwords are Strong
One of the easiest yet often overlooked ways to protect your employees when working from home is by strengthening passwords and ensuring maximum password protection is practiced across devices.
The US Federal Trade Commission asks everyone to use passwords on all devices and apps. Also, you should ensure the passwords are long, strong, and unique. They should also at least have 12 characters that are a combination of numbers, alphabets, and symbols.
It is also ideal to add a password screen every time you access your laptop and other devices. This will make it hard for a third party to access your sensitive files if your device ever ends up in their hands. Additionally, we recommend using a password manager tool to keep your passwords secure.
#3 – Take Extra Care of Your Email Security
Emails are vital to keeping communications alive between colleagues. However, emails can also be easily exploited and compromised. According to UK’s National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC), the use of emails happens to be one of the various recommendations to protect your staff as they work from home.
Additionally, they advise following the below-mentioned measures to protect email accounts from phishing scams.
- Ensure emails can only be opened through your company’s VPN. This involves an encrypted network connection that authenticates users or devices and encrypts data in transit between users and your services. In case you already use a VPN, ensure it is entirely patched.
- Your employees are more likely to lose their devices when they are working away from the office. Ensure the devices encrypt data while at rest, as this will help protect email data on the device in case, it’s lost or stolen. Most modern devices come with a built-in encryption feature. However, you might have to turn on encryption and configure it.
- Also, be cautious about phishing attacks as they happen to be taking an ever-growing number of forms.
Keep Remote Work Safe
Ever since remote work became a popular alternative to commuting, cybercrime has massively grown by 238 percent. Blindly following the security tips mentioned in this article won’t guarantee safety against all forms of attacks. Nevertheless, they will definitely reduce the chances of getting compromised.