The Increased Cybersecurity Risks of Home Working

Sep 14, 2020
Author: Hawsons
cybersecurity risks

With more people working from home than ever before, cybersecurity risks have increased significantly. Remote working can expose vulnerabilities within your cybersecurity and it is very important that you have the best practices in place to reduce the chances of a cyber-attack or data breach. In this article, we are going to go through some of the steps you should take in order to maintain a high level of cybersecurity and minimise risk.

 

Train your staff about cyber awareness

It is very important that all members of staff are regularly trained in cybersecurity awareness. With lockdown meaning more employees are working remotely, cyber attackers are looking to take advantage. Your employees are your first line of defence against attacks and need to be aware of the methods used by the attackers.

Training your staff in cybersecurity awareness is one of the most important steps as staff become better able to spot the signs of a potential cyber-attack. Phishing attacks can be one of the most common cyber-attacks. Find out more about phishing attacks here.

 

Make sure all software is updated on a regular basis

It is also very important to make sure that all software being used for remote working is updated regularly. The best way to ensure this is to enable automatic updates and to either force, the updates via automated policies, or if needs be to do manual checks.

The on-access virus scanning and regular scans we have in the workplace must of course continue, especially if staff are using their personal machine to facilitate remote working.

 

Make sure all of your data is backed up

It is crucial that all business data is backed up, so you do not lose it in the event of a cyber-attack, especially ransomware. The 3-2-1 approach for backups is the best practice being:

3 Copies of your data (1 live plus 2 backups)

2 Media types (eg. disk, tape)

1 Offsite copy (cloud or storage unit taken off-site).

Testing your backups is also vital.

 

Securing your network for remote working

It is important that you provide your employees with secure methods to communicate with each other. If you don’t, employees may use their own personal accounts to send business information to one another, which means potentially sensitive business information can be stolen from an employee’s personal account.

You should make sure your employees are using a VPN (a virtual private network) with strong end-to-end encryption when working remotely. In no circumstances should you allow your employees to use a public network for business use. Training is key in this area.

 

How can we help?

At Hawsons we have a dedicated team of specialist technology and IT accountants in Sheffield, Doncaster, and Northampton.

Free initial meeting

Charles Kavazy 1

Charles Kavazy

Director of IT Services

0114 266 7141

ck@hawsons.co.uk