A Business-Minded Approach To Employment Law

Offering Full Time Work From Home Positions? Here’s What You Should Do To Protect Yourself

On Behalf of | May 28, 2020 | Uncategorized |

With this pandemic, work-from-home trends have increased dramatically in the workforce. There are notable perks for employers in allowing remote workers to continue working in their home offices even as businesses have continued to open.

Even though there are advantages to allowing your employees to continue working from home, you also need to consider some risks. For example, your company’s data or sensitive materials may be more likely to be compromised.

Make Sure Your Employees are Aware of Threats

When an employee begins working at home, or in a location other than your offices, they must be aware of cyber threats. Cybercriminals continuously attempt to exploit human elements within secure office environments and will be even more dangerous in remote working environments.

Employees working from home should review their cybersecurity training and ensure they can identify a phishing email, which is one of the simplest and common forms of cyber attacks. In the past few weeks, malicious cyber actors have been exploiting the public’s concerns regarding COVID-19 and have launched attacks that resulted in people opening harmful attachments and links.

Ensure Your Employee’s Home Network in Not Vulnerable

Many are not familiar with significant security vulnerabilities out there that can compromise their home wireless networks. Cybercriminals have the ability to eavesdrop on Wi-Fi traffic by using simple tools, such as antennas. Your employees can prevent this eavesdropping with the use of encryption and only access secure websites.

Virtual Desktops Should Remain Clean

Many employees will store or keep customer information, confidential data, sensitive files, or intellectual property on their home-work laptops. If their machine should become compromised, this can mean entry into your organization’s networks and systems.

When you have employees working from home, you need additional cybersecurity measures put into place to protect your valuable information. One step would include not downloading sensitive information and then sending it through unencrypted email.

Update Employee Credentials

Oftentimes employees will not update their default login credentials for their Wi-Fi routers. These credentials can become shared and known by malicious actors giving them easy entry into home networks. When your employees work from home, they should be changing their default credentials before beginning your work.

All Online Devices Should be Secure

Any internet-connected device your employee has can be used as an access point to a home network. If they have a cell phone, tablet, or any other smart device, these all have inherent vulnerabilities. Typically, people use the same Wi-Fi for all their smart devices in their homes. Using the same Wi-Fi allows a malicious actor to jump into all devices when they gain access to one. One way to protect against this is to strengthen the uniqueness and complexity of passwords.

Working from home may become a more standard work trend, especially until the virus can become contained. Keeping your employees safe, and your data safe will allow you to continue being a successful business.

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