Many businesses are beginning to realize the pandemic will change the way employees work, permanently. Surveys are starting to research this topic, and around 67% of businesses say they will at least have a work from home option after the pandemic is no longer a concern. Facebook, Twitter, and many other web-based businesses have released various statements about the end of the era of office life as we know it. Business owners scrambled to connect users when the lock-down began, and there was little concern with security or best practices in many cases. We have watched and reported on the fallout from this disregard of IT security over the past six months as ransomware attacks continue to increase month over month.
Today we will talk about some digital security best practices. If you need help understanding or implementing these practices in your digital workflow, please reach out to us here at Quanexus, we would be happy to meet with you.
The first issue in users working from home is the way they are connecting to the internet. Employees are connecting to business networks through consumer grade routers typically over WIFI. This is a couple steps down from a hardwired connection in an office with a business grade firewall protecting the network from external threats. A VPN can help with some of these issues, but not all. Read our blog post on VPN’s Here.
The next factor to consider is employee behavior while at home. Studies show users who work from home tend to be more lax about IT Security. This WFH change for users is an opportunity to conduct a company-wide Security Awareness Training. As we always say, your employee can be your biggest asset, or your biggest liability. This is even more significant with remote users.
All data access should be least privileged. This means each user should only have access to the data and applications they need to perform their job. Least privileged policies help workstations run more efficiently because they don’t have every piece of software the company owns on them. It also keeps data in the hands of only those who need it. Many of the data breaches we have seen, come through users who should not have had access to that data in the first place.
Users should understand the workstation provided by the company is only for work activities. This is even more important now with company workstations in the home. Parameters can be set by IT to limit access to known bad websites, social media, shopping, etc. Additionally, the workstations can be limited so users cannot install software.
At Quanexus we are helping businesses adapt to this new way of working using best practices to secure business data. Give us a call today if your business is facing long term work from home issues.
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