As remote working gains popularity due to the pandemic crisis, your remote employees can perform their duties from anywhere and boost productivity in your business. However, the chances of falling victim to cybercrimes have increased significantly. Remote working makes your business vulnerable to data breaches, identity fraud, and other malicious online activities.
Fortunately, you can prevent such occurrences by introducing cybersecurity courses to your employees and create awareness. Along with these courses, your remote workforce can implement the following cybersecurity tips to help prevent data breaches.
Avoid public wi-fi networks and always use VPN
Public Wi-fi networks are loopholes that cybercriminals can use to compromise your company’s network. As such, many people access a public wi-fi connection, which often lacks firewalls and data encryption. Therefore, it poses the risk of exposing critical business information like customer details to third-party. Ask your remote workers to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) whenever accessing business accounts or networks online. The thing is, a VPN secures data transmission through heavy encryption thus locking out cybercriminals from intercepting sensitive data.
Beware of phishing scams
Cybercriminals are always coming up with new tactics to exploit vulnerabilities in a network. One of their malicious techniques is phishing scams. Here, they disguise themselves (mostly via emails) as legitimate organizations or sources, and their intentions are never good.
For instance, they may embed a malicious link in an email, and once individuals click on it, it introduces spyware on their devices. This way, hackers can spy on login credentials to business accounts or other sensitive data that they use to blackmail your organization. The worst part is that it’s getting harder to detect phishing emails since they seem and sound legit. For that reason, avoiding emails from unknown senders is the best remedy.
Use strong passwords
You may use strong firewalls, VPN, and other cybersecurity measures to safeguard your remote network. Still, the truth remains – if your remote workers are using weak passwords on their business accounts or devices, you’re vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Realize that hackers are webmasters who know that weak passwords are the soft spots they should exploit to bypass heavily secured networks. Therefore, encourage remote workers to use longer and difficult-to-crack passwords on business accounts. An example of a strong password is a combination of capital and small letters, numbers, and special characters. One that is difficult or impossible to guess.
Separate work and personal devices
Separating work and personal devices can add another layer of cybersecurity to your business. For instance, when remote workers do business tasks in a specific business laptop separate from personal use, they reduce the risk of third parties accessing company data.
The thing is a company-issued laptop is more likely to have cybersecurity measures in place (like antivirus, VPN, and others) to ensure a secure connection. On the other hand, a personal laptop lacking such security measures jeopardizes sensitive business data. Therefore, your remote workforce should separate work and personal devices to help improve and secure your company data.
Keep devices and software up-to-date
Updates (for both software and devices) are primarily made to improve performance, fix security issues, and ensure your data is safe. That’s why remote workers need to update all software and devices used for business tasks. Your remote workforce should use up-to-date antivirus programs, and other related software to help protect your company data. This way, you’ll tighten cybersecurity in your business.
