Before the pandemic, most corporate employees commuted to work, worked at the office and returned home. But this changed with the pandemic when jobs migrated to home offices, leaving most business owners considering again the question – why is cybersecurity important?
As the pandemic subsided, we observed that success never depended on the location of the work. The bottom line is that your location has nothing to do with your ability to succeed at work, whether your office is in your kitchen, bedroom, a local cafe or a real workspace in an office building.
The functionality of the office is also evolving in the hybrid era; according to a PwC study, it now facilitates team collaboration and connection building. It appears to be rather rational and obvious to an employee.
However, things become more complicated if we view hybrid labor from the perspective of an employer.
- How can we ensure device and data security when we are are away from the workplace?
- How can we prevent team members from copying company files to their own storage?
- How can one prevent our team members from accidentally downloading malware?
Therefore, the corporate cybersecurity approach should remain the same for both offices and at home. Here are four hybrid workforce cybersecurity concerns.
1. Weak Passwords
If employees use weak or frequently used passwords for their accounts, businesses that use cybersecurity software like firewalls and VPNs to safeguard the remote network may still be at risk. Hackers will try to attack accounts by cracking the passwords because human error is easier for them to take advantage of than sophisticated cybersecurity technologies, giving them access to important data belonging to your company.
2. Unsafe Home Internet for Online Work
Home wifi networks can pose a risk to endanger the cybersecurity of your business even if your organization protects the laptops that your employees use for work. Your staff might update their antivirus or smartphone software, but they can forget to update the software on their home wifi. Without the proper upgrades, routers won’t have the newest security fixes, which increases the danger of data breaches for your business.
3. Phishing Schemes
Employees may unintentionally allow hackers and cybercriminals access to your organization’s network and sensitive data. Phishing scams pose a cybersecurity risk to employees who work from home. To deceive the victim into revealing critical information or personal login credentials. A person or entity will frequently use email to seem a reliable source. The attacker can commit identity fraud, break into accounts, and steal further sensitive information using this information.
4. Use of Personal Devices for Work Purposes
Employees may utilize personal equipment like home printers, laptops, and smartphones to work remotely, if they don’t bring their work gadgets home. Although allowing employees to use their own devices can increase flexibility, they can also put your company at risk for cybersecurity. Since many employees don’t encrypt their personal computers or phones, working on a personal phone or laptop can put sensitive information in danger. Similar to computers, printers can put your business at risk for security breaches because of their numerous functionalities.
Bring Business Cybersecurity Home
Search for cybersecurity companies that offer capabilities that can be used both inside and outside of the office. Unfortunately, employers can easily get around them by using an app’s web version.
Roaming clients are another element essential for effective, versatile work from home or the office. It is important to protect the corporate network, and putting web filtering software on devices is a sensible step if the device links to other networks, such as the home network.
Another crucial feature that must be added to any cybersecurity software is the ability to see and analyze statistics. In web filtering, statistics often display the most popular website categories while logs display a user’s actions. This reveals whether any time-wasting or contagious resources were accessed.
Keep your passwords secure (don’t store them in a document named Passwords on your desktop). Keep them difficult to guess, add email filtering to protect your inbox, use antivirus software, and last but not least, use web content filtering.
Conclusion
Xperteks understands how challenging it might be to balance the hybrid life for employees and employers. And we provide the latest technology in cybersecurity protection and enterprise-level solutions. We give organizations a broad range of cybersecurity services in NYC that eliminate the risks.
To know more contact us at 212.206.6262 and do sign up for cybersecurity tips.
