As we enter Year 2 of working from home in our “new normal,” the IT experts at Interplay have been getting a lot of calls from SMB leaders. In a lot of these calls, leaders like you have been asking how to maintain security when employees work remotely.
Here’s the answer.
Luckily, there is a solution (or, rather, a whole range of solutions) you can use to layer your cybersecurity when employees are working from home. You have options for protecting your data and your business.
Here is just a small sampling of all the tactics you can use when you’re looking at how to maintain security when employees work remotely. To learn more or to figure out which ones are best for you, just contact the IT security experts at Interplay in Seattle.
If you want your employees to follow safe remote work security practices, the first thing you have to do is train them to be cyber-aware.
We’re betting you don’t have time to do this right now, so you’ll be pleased to hear that IT support providers like Interplay can set you up with solutions such as KnowBe4 to craft a cyber-awareness training regimen with frequent refresher courses and quizzes to keep this info top of mind for your employees.
Email gets hacked all the darn time, so you don’t want to send sensitive files back and forth between email accounts.
A smarter idea is to set up a VPN or “virtual private network” that you and your employees can use to securely ditch the email back-and-forth and instead connect directly to non-cloud and legacy resources on your corporate network from anywhere and at any time. (Quick tip: a VPN can’t protect you from a bad WiFi network, so avoid using unsecured WiFi at coffee shops, airports, and hotels even if you have a VPN.)
Now that you and all your employees work outside of the office firewall, that firewall isn’t doing much for you.
Instead of relying on a firewall, the better idea is to switch to using Zero Trust methodologies, which use Mobile Device Management software to actively authenticate all of your employees as they navigate through your files and data. You can think of Zero Trust as being a firewall around your critical business data, as opposed to the traditional office firewall that simply surrounds your office network.
If your employees are using personal devices, you want to ensure those devices are up to date before you let them into your systems. This is because the vast majority of cyberattacks happen to outdated systems.
Patching and updating systems is extremely important, but it can be hard to get your employees to understand what that looks like, how to download patches and updates, and how to tell if the update actually took effect.
Unless you like the idea of running remote IT troubleshooting over the phone for each of your employees every time a patch comes out, your best bet is to leave this remote IT support task to a managed services provider (MSP).
Zoom doesn’t have great security, G Suite (now Google Workspace) has limited functionality for larger teams, and FaceTime only works for Macs. What a pain in the neck!
Companies that use Microsoft Office 365 / Microsoft 365 can easily and affordably switch to Microsoft Teams, which is Microsoft’s sharing and collaboration portal. Teams handles everything from videoconferences to phone calls to document sharing to Slack-like chat functions (and more). In essence, Teams is a great way to share and collaborate in real-time on files securely.
Best of all, Teams handles all these tasks in a manner that supports seamless remote backups, so you can boost productivity and collaboration while reducing downtime. Win!
Sadly, there’s no 100% fail-proof way to maintain remote work cybersecurity for your WFH employees except for setting a forcefield around them and their devices while they work. (If you figure out how to do this, tell us how.)
Happily, with the IT experts at Interplay, you’ll have a wide range of options at a wide range of price points for significantly improving employee cybersecurity at your organization.
If you’re wondering how to maintain security when employees work remotely, Interplay has the answers.
For 20 years, the friendly and knowledgeable IT team at Interplay has helped business leaders across a range of industries get more out of their tech, stress-free. Not only are we always (and we mean always) happy to offer the best managed IT services, support, and advice, we’re also the team you can trust for the best cocktail recommendations here in Seattle or in Disney World – we’re versatile! All humor aside though, we’d love to help you get your IT running smoothly and securely, around the clock.
Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Unsplash
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16300 Christensen Rd Ste 304 Seattle, WA 98188
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