Cyber Security - How to Protect Your Remote Workforce

Recent changes in the way we work and where we work from is something that is here to stay. Remote working is the new norm posing unique security risks for organisations including the use of BYOD’s and a range of different Wi-Fi access networks to access company information.

The fast pace of the changing workforce has seen many organisations scrambling to implement best practices to prevent the risk of cybercrime.

How do you ensure your workforce is protected? 

Turn on two factor authentication to protect your remote team from people guessing their password. It is a simple, inexpensive solution that is often already available in the technology you have in place and provides powerful protection. 

Create an incident response plan that has been practiced, and signed off by leadership. This is key to managing a cyber incident successfully. Knowing who is in charge of what, the steps they need to take and having communication templates already developed will ensure you're a few steps ahead of the game if/when you need to respond to an incident. Keep in mind, large and small businesses are at risk for different reasons, no business is too small to have an incident response plan.

Monitor Data Usage by using the appropriate technology and applications to manage and monitor data transfers and minimise the risk of data compromise. This can be a useful tool to identify where abnormal amounts of data are being transferred which could indicate malicious activity, keeping your remote workforce safe. 

Appoint a Cyber Safe team that are in charge of communicating to and training your remote team, responding to incidents and keeping cybersecurity relevant for all departments. A Cyber Safe Team should include a team member from each department in your business, with one senior business leader. This is a great way to build a cybersecurity culture in your business.

Train your remote team on how to secure their work including are the acceptable forms of accessing business data remotely. Is it via Teams, VPN, Sharepoint and what is the method for doing so? Cyber criminals could attempt to trick your team members into logging in a different way that could give them access to your data. Making sure your team knows the safe ways to connect to your data will help protect you here.

Email security one of the most vulnerable parts of every business is email, receiving emails that look legitimate, when they're not. There is technology you can put in place that provides protection against advanced email threats and can prompt your team to check things if they don't look right

Conduct regular phishing tests to identify which remote team members need some extra training, and what type of emails leave your business vulnerable. You can change up the style of email, who it comes from and what the hook is and build out your training to complement the test. This is an inexpensive and good way to train your team with some 'safe' real world examples. 

How Powernet Can Help

One of the most challenging things about working remotely is keeping everyone up to date with current cyber threats, and protecting computers. Implementing the above strategies as a starting point will put your business in a great position to keep your remote workforce safe online. 

We provide comprehensive cyber security solutions, we understand that every business has different technical, regulatory and industry specific vulnerabilities. Our solutions work in combination to enable real time remote workforce and cyber defense, blocking of malicious attacks, training of your staff to understand the different types of threats and analysis of your traffic to stop attacks before they happen.

Check out this free cloud app scanner to see where your cloud platforms might be vulnerable.