Cyber security at home depends on your employee
When a person works from home, they must take responsibility for protecting sensitive data online. They can no longer trust their employer to protect them at work.
The problem is that cybercriminals know how vulnerable remote workers are. They try to exploit weak Wi-Fi security, lack of firewalls, laptops shared with friends and family, and poorly secured mobile devices.
This puts the remote worker at risk and your organization’s data if the worker brings poorly protected devices into the office that has already been compromised.
So hybrid office cybersecurity training starts with the remote worker at home. They should understand the importance of using antivirus software to prevent malware from entering and keeping their systems and programs up to date.
It would help if you also were responsible for strengthening the security of your home Wi-Fi network. This means changing your password to something more complex, as well as changing your router’s default password. By simply changing those two passwords, the remote worker can make life difficult for a hacker trying to access their device through their web traffic.
Your team can also protect their privacy with a VPN, which can be essential for certain types of remote work. A VPN secures your remote connection and encrypts your data, blocking anyone who doesn’t have permission to access your web traffic.
Raise awareness about phishing
Phishing never went away. However, since phishing is one of the oldest forms of cyberattacks defined in 1996, it may be a surprise to learn that in 2020 2.02 phishing websites were launched on Google.
A great number begs the question: how come people keep falling for phishing scams?
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman says it all boils down to human psychology and that phishing emails use clever “emotional tactics” to disarm and trick us into making unsound decisions.
The problem with phishing is that it receipts a remote worker one click to lose everything and take the business with them. And because there are a lot of distractions in a hybrid home office, it’s much easier for a remote worker to make the wrong, hyper-rapid decision, especially when they’re feeling pressured or stressed. In fact, human error was involved in 85% of data breaches last year.
That’s why educating your team about the dangers of phishing is important. Here are some tips for your team:
- Phishing emails are deceptive, and anybody can fall for a scam. But a suspicious email usually has telltale signs, including bad grammar and spelling.
- Think about what existence asked of you. Does that sound realistic/plausible? Does it make sense to you?
- Check the email address of a shipment. Often a phishing email impersonates someone you know, which is why it can be so easy to fall for it. However, a quick squared of the sender’s email address will confirm whether this email is genuine or not.
- Report suspicious emails immediately Cyber security
It’s also important to constantly remind your team to be on the lookout for phishing scams; you can do this in virtual meetings, for example.
Check all third-party providers
Cyber security It could be that remote workers use their tool to do their work at home and then bring it to the office as a hybrid worker.
This can cause unique security issues as not all third-party tools are safe. While the companies that make the tools themselves are not nefarious, it sometimes happens that they haven’t implemented up-to-date security measures. Therefore, some tools are more vulnerable to cyber attacks than others.
It would be best if you communicated to your team the importance of investigating third-party providers on your network. To do this, list the tools you and your team use. Next, identify how much data you share with these third-party tools/providers and how sensitive they are. Next, take a closer look at each tool: What security methods did they implement? Does their commitment to online safety align with yours?
It would help if you did this with whatever tools your team uses that you may not have previously been aware of. Ensure everyone is on the same sheet, so your organization only uses apps and tools that have been properly vetted for security.
There may even be instances where you can create your own chat app from scratch that has end-to-end encryption and is therefore guaranteed to keep your communications safe and secure. This is just one way to ensure control over the security of your applications and tools.
summarizing
Cyber security The hybrid office brings unique benefits and challenges, one of the main challenges being the threat of cybersecurity, as well as how you educate your staff on how they can help keep cyberattacks to a minimum.
Essentially, your entire team needs to work together on this. There can be no room for error, whether at home or in the office, and you must hold annual meetings that reiterate ways to deal with and prevent attacks and what to do in the event of a shutdown.