Best practices for data safety in a remote work environment
Do you have staff working from home? Of late, due to the Coronavirus crisis, many businesses shifted to the remote working environment. While it raises some data security concerns, they can overcome them by following a few best practices.
Formulate rules
You can start by formulating rules that define the extent and manner in which employees may use personal devices for work purposes.
- Who is allowed to use personal devices for work?
- Spell out the regulations that they must follow—for example, regular checks for malware and updates to anti-malware software.
- Security concerns need addressing if there are restrictions on the device type, software, or operating systems used.
Focus on the 2 T’s of cybersecurity
- Train your staff: The first T is training your staff on identifying IT threats and cybercrime activities that they can be a victim of. Examples include phishing emails, suspicious attachments, clone sites, etc., Another area to train your staff is free/public Wi-Fi. They need to know that public Wi-Fi can be a gateway for hackers and cybercriminals into your system. Accessing emails from the airport’s waiting lounge or the mall’s food court can expose your business to IT threats.
- Teach good password hygiene: This is the second T. Help your employees understand how important password strength is. They should be able to identify weak passwords and steer clear of them. Also, they need to know that no matter how urgent the situation seems, password sharing is not acceptable. Similarly, mistakes such as repeating the password for multiple accounts, not changing the passwords frequently, etc., can make a cyber criminal’s job easier.
Keeping things under control
You can conduct monthly audits of the devices your employees will be using for work purposes. Arrange for regular security patch implementation, firewall installation, and software updates. Install quality anti-malware software, firewalls, and make sure email security systems are in place. You can ensure appropriate data access through role and permission-based access control measures even in remote environments.
All of this may seem new and tedious, especially for businesses looking to recover from the effects of the ongoing pandemic. This is why it is a good idea to team up with Wahaya IT to help set up a strong, secure, work-from-home environment for your business.
Contact us today to get started on improving your data safety.
