April
26
Work From Home: How To Secure Your Business’s Data During This Situation?
Post By: datares Category:

The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus across the globe is making the headlines every single day. With an increase in the number of coronavirus cases globally, the government of almost all the countries has recommended people to maintain social distancing as it seems to be the most effective way to break the virus chain. Due to these reasons, business houses and corporate sectors have embraced the remote working practices.

As the remote working system or work from the home system is becoming the new normal, business houses are working hard to put all the effort into structuring the “work from home” policies. Here the primary concern is to maintain the continuity of the business and along with that, it is important to ensure the security of the corporate confidential data and client’s data.

#1 Security Awareness Program For Employees And Staff:

Companies and corporate sectors must organize an awareness program for all the employees who are working, stating the significance of the company and client data. The program should provide information regarding the phishing emails, malicious forwards, eliminating the use of public wifi, efficiently securing the home WI-fi routes. Moreover, employees must also get personal devices verified before using it.

  • Employees must be constantly reminded not to click any unusual links from unknown people.
  • Avoid installing any sort of third-party applications on mobile devices or smartphones.
  • Always have an emergency team in place to mitigate the unprecedented cyber risks or cyber-attacks.

#2 Employees Should Have Access To VPN Services:

VPNs are a highly reliable and secure medium that can help employees to work from home. Deploying a VPN will secure the data that moves between the core system to the externally based or remote working zone.

VPN services are quite popular for providing an additional layer of security, which (in simplified terms) provides:

  • Hiding the user’s IP address
  • Encrypting data transfers in transit
  • Masking the user’s location

ExpressVPN and NordVPN appear to be good choices, but it is in your best interest to do your own due diligence before selecting a provider for your company.

Tip: Always try to avoid free VPN services as they are not reliable and trustworthy.

#3 Organizations Must Look Forward To Having Mandatory Backup System:

Corporate sectors can encourage employees to make use of the external drives to backup the computers (a system that is used for official work). If you are using mobile device management or enterprise mobility management then you can easily initiate automated backups with the system’s management console.

Tip: You can make use of secure online backup services, if available. If you are allowing employees to have local storage then it can simply become another potential security problem for the organization.

#4 Organizations Must Ensure That The Wifi – Router Passwords Are Secure:

Organizations must encourage their employees to secure their home network by protecting Wifi & router passwords. To protect from cyber attacks and data breaching, home networks must have a strong password that is unique (it must have different special characters, numbers, and alphabets). If you do not have a strong password is equivalent to leaving the doors open for the cybercriminals to easily intervene in the system. In addition, there should be a system in place to verify the security protocols that state

  • No passwords should be shared through any sort of network or medium.
  • Make sure to shred the printed documents that contain any sort of confidential information.
  • Avoid using unsecured networks.

You can even implement two-factor authentication for all the employees as it is considered to be the toughest possible protection across the devices.

Tip: If possible, you can implement Domain Name Server or firewall to increase the protection of the home network.

#5 Developing A Contingency Plan:

Create an effective team that is capable of handling security management responsibilities. Along with that, you must have a contingency plan that provides information to the tech support in managing the passwords and security protocols-policies and delegating different responsibilities and roles to the team members.

Summary:

All the companies, large or small need to realize that when employees are allowed to work from home, they must comply with the Data Protection Act. Moreover, they are even obliged to comply with the parameters of due diligence that comes under Cyber Law and Data Protection Law.

For more information, visit www.dataresilience.com.au or drop us a note at [email protected]