There’s a new rising trend in the workforce that has been growing steadily for the past decade – working from home. According to recent research, more than 4.7 million US employees (or roughly 3.4% of the workforce) are now doing some sort of remote work. That phenomenon is based on the irruption of new online tools, tasks that can be done without the need of being in the office, and shifting cultural preferences.
In such a context, it’s highly likely that you have remote employees in your company. If that’s the case, then you should definitely be worried about their security. Given that people working from home will do so mostly on their own and with little oversight, they can be easy targets for hackers trying to get access to your data. Besides, a study by the University of Maryland found that Internet-connected computers are attacked every 39 seconds on average, so you surely understand why you need to take this issue seriously.
Be it because you’re working with remote collaborators on a regular basis, have some employees working from home a few days of the week, or have hired software testing outsourcing companies to help you out on a project, you should consider the following steps to protect your employees and yourself from attacks.
1- Define a detailed security policy for remote workers
You surely have a security strategy in place to strengthen your company’s protection. However, you could only be enforcing it for in-house members. Once you start working with remote employees, you lose some of the control you can have on their security practices. Thus, a remote security policy is the essential first step to avoid losing precious data through remote workers.
This encompasses a number of things, but it’s especially important to define how your remote personnel will work with sensitive data. The plan can determine the use of encryption methods of storage and communication, define good security practices, and cover the minimum security requirements in terms of equipment and digital tools all remote workers should have.
2 – Name a security leader
It’s striking how security is treated in a lot of companies nowadays, especially in smaller ones. Though everybody agrees that security is one of the greatest concerns for modern businesses, a lot of companies fail to appoint someone in charge of the overall security of the entire organization. Don’t let that happen to you!
Pick an idoneous candidate from your staff and make him/her responsible for everything security-related, which of course includes the security of remote workers. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an IT staffer to fill this role. As long as the person you appoint knows what the security strategy and policy are and follows their guidelines for every project, you’ll be fine.
3 – Provide corporate equipment
Whenever your employees work remotely, it’s highly likely that they’ll use their personal laptop or computer. Believe it or not, this is a dangerous practice that can put your company’s systems and data at risk. That’s because that personal equipment used to access your systems and information might not be up to par with your security standard.
Since you can’t know for sure, the best way to have this covered is by providing corporate equipment for all remote workers. That’s the only thing you can do to ensure that the devices people working from home are using have all the hardware and software required by your security policy. It’s true that this may take some money from your budget. If you can’t make that kind of investment, at least you should conduct an examination of the devices remote workers will use to be sure they fit your security standards.
4 – Pay attention to their authentication and passwords
A lot of experts consider access to different services as the weakest link in any security system. Given the scarce level of sophistication used by a lot of people when it comes to passwords and authentication, it’s hard to argue with that view. Since remote workers will do most of their work online, you need to enforce their access to all the systems they need so as to avoid potential breaches.
What can you do? On one hand, you should establish a solid password policy that includes crucial aspects such as strong password creation, password updating, and the use of password managers. On the other hand, you should push for the implementation of multifactor authentication. With it, you’re taking the login process to a higher level of security, as you’ll ask all your employees to confirm their identities through a combination of 2 factors, such as a password and a unique code sent to their phones.
5 – Control your worker’s Internet connections
Another risk factor for your remote employees is the Internet connection they use. Since there’s always the possibility of a malicious actor lurking in their own network that might have gained access through a connected device you can’t vet, taking steps to isolate your workers’ devices is a must.
There are several ways in which you can do this. Multifactor authentication and the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) are a great combination to start with. Yet, you can always go a little further and install a business-grade firewall to isolate the devices from the other users connected to the network. Finally, you should always ask your employees to use a secure connection. This is especially important for people that like to work from public spaces like coffee shops, as they are more exposed.
6 – Limit the kind and amount of local data they can store
A recent survey found out that 15% of breaches are caused by lost or missing devices. This has been a lifelong issue for companies with remote workers, so you can’t neglect it. Since you won’t be able to prevent someone from losing their computer or having it stolen, you have to take measures to secure the information that might be in it.
One of your safest bets? Limiting the kind and amount of data your remote employees can store locally. Since you can now store most of your information on the cloud, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for your staff to have local copies. That’s why your policy should contemplate how to prevent people from downloading important information and having it laying around in their devices.
7 – Keep a constant training program going
Since most of the cybersecurity attacks benefit from human mistakes, it’s only logical for you to have an ongoing security training program to keep your employees in tip-top shape. Such a program should include the best and latest protection measures, reviews of the company’s security policy, and the discussion on the latest developments in cybersecurity.
Naturally, you don’t have to turn this program into a weekly thing. There’ll be moments where the training program will prove itself useful, such as when you hire a new employee, a new security policy is introduced, or a security issue has appeared or is threatening your company. The best security you can have is a vigilant workforce, especially when a portion of such workforce works from their own homes.
Some final words
These are some of the tips you should follow to ensure your remote workforce is protected against data breaches and your information is secure. However, there are plenty of other things you can do, such as implementing emerging technologies to improve your overall security, updating your systems on a regular basis, or even outsourcing software testing to bring your applications to a higher level of security sophistication.
Be that as it may, the biggest takeaway you can get from this is that you need to pay attention to the security of your company, especially with everything related to your remote employees. They are an appealing target for hackers, so you have to keep an eye on them and how they work, and help them develop safer work habits that will obviously benefit you and them in equal measure.
