Recently, many businesses have turned to adopting some form of remote working. This could be as a hybrid policy with a certain number of days in the office and some at home, fully remote where the home is the office or a more ad hoc approach where you can work from home when needed. No matter which category your business fits into, security is the number one factor. In this blog, we will discuss the options businesses have in terms of locking down remote workers security.

What Common Threats are Faced by Remote Workers?

Since remote working became popular in 2020 during the pandemic, threats have emerged and became more common. Although these aren’t all remote working specific, we find many users who work from home do face these threats.

Phishing – Arguably the most common threat among all businesses currently is phishing. The most common form of phishing can be found in emails posing to be someone they are not. An example of this could be someone pretending to be Microsoft and asking you to sign in. Once you do this, they then have your details, and your business is at risk.

Data Breaches – Another common form of threat to businesses are data breaches. These can provide extremely costly to businesses due to the value of data and the processes required to recover anything lost. You also could face legal risks if your data isn’t protected properly. This therefore makes it extremely important to ensure that everything is locked down correctly.

 

What Methods are there to Improve Security for Remote Workers?

There are a handful of methods to improve security for remote workers. These are highlighted below, and we have given some golden nuggets of information about each, explaining why they will help.

 

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)

Multi Factor Authentication or MFA for short is a layer of security which can be added to many accounts. The main purpose of this is to add an additional “factor” in which is needed to verify a login attempt. An example of this is the Microsoft Authenticator application on your phone which when a log in attempt is recognised, sends a sequence of random digits to your phone which must be entered correctly to allow the login. This makes it much harder for malicious users to login as they would also need your secondary factor i.e. phone and the code it generates.

Security Awareness Training

Another method of increasing security for remote workers is by enrolling staff in security awareness training programmes. The purpose of these is to teach staff common identifiers of potential security threats. This may be help in identifying phishing emails, password best practices or helping staff identify the role they play in keeping the business secure. This is beneficial to not just remote workers but also any member of staff who uses tools such as email.

Virtual Private Networks (VPN)

Many businesses will be familiar with the term VPN if they have remote workers or have researched security for remote workers. Put simply, a VPN is used to make the connection between the remote workers network and the workplace network private. This is extremely important if the user is logging in from a public network such as in a café.

 

Security for Remote Workers: Three Cherries

By putting these security measures in place, you can put your business in good stead with keeping threats at bay and your security for remote workers high. However, we understand some of these measures are tricky to implement for most businesses. Therefore, if your business requires any assistance, contact Three Cherries today and our team of experts will advise what is best for your business and implement these strategies.