The rise of remote working is not purely the result of COVID-19’s impact. After all, remote teams and companies are pretty normal these days. But we can say with certainty that many companies have been forced by the novel coronavirus to adjust their operations towards home-based workers and scattered offices.
Unfortunately, in many countries, there was little time to prepare for the major upheaval. Where a business’ admin was once centralized and controlled from a single office, now, companies must contend with decentralized operations and staff working from and connecting to home networks.
This poses a serious concern. With multiple networks and new devices involved in the daily 9-to-5, the risk of data breaches, malware infection, confidentiality leaks, and other security concerns is doubled.
Here, we go over a few of the key risks that go hand in hand with working from home and offer up some simple and actionable solutions.
With more people working from home, the number of access points leading into a company’s servers or networks is exponentially increased — think of all those additional wifi networks and staff-owned devices that are used when people work from home.
When the number of access points is increased, the potential for a breach is greater, proportionate to the number of new networks and devices being used.
Adding insult to injury, the number of malware programs targeting COVID-concerned citizens has taken a rise of late. Dressed up as World Health Organisation emails, text messages from the government, and more, malware is making its way in the world on the back of fear and confusion. All it takes is for one staff member to unwittingly download a file and pass it on to other team members or the company’s network and a virtual hell can break loose.
This is troublesome as businesses can invest thousands per year to secure their systems. In the case of blue-chip companies, the cybersecurity budget can surpass a million. Sophisticated firewalls, intrusion detection bots, antivirus, malware detection software, and more mean a centralized network is better protected.
With BYOD, companies essentially have to trust staff to take the proper precautions. If staff devices travel between networks, attackers can tailgate and breach the company’s system.
All staff should make sure they have VPN software installed and active before starting work, handling any company files, or accessing cloud storage systems. Although many staff will have VPN software already, companies should be cautious. A single trusted provider and a company contract are best. Then, staff can download a VPN for the different devices they will work on.
