Remote Work Security Challenges that Your Organization Should Address

Ever since the pandemic hit in 2020, numerous offices had to quickly institute remote work policies. However, due to the urgent nature of the situation, they were not able to train their employees in all its nuances well enough. It took some time to really get remote work systems in place, and at par with the productivity levels of conventional workplaces. Then, it became evident that remote work is an excellent option for both organizations and employees due to the flexibility and cost-saving involved. It does, however, have its various challenges.

Furthermore, security is a major issue when it comes to remote work. When your employees are in the office, you can implement security protocols and defences at a satisfactory level. However, when your employees are not working on the premises, it is quite difficult to control the security level. Most of them will utilize home connections, such as Spectrum internet packages, but may face multiple security issues. You should take the appropriate measures to protect employee, company and client data by addressing these issues and working on their respective solutions.

No Corporate Network Defences

When you are working in your office, there are multiple corporate network defences in place. These basically create a private and protected network for employees to work on safely. There are no such networks at home, so companies should figure out the appropriate alternatives.

Virtual Private Networks (VPs) are a great way to mask your internet activity and make things difficult for any malicious parties wanting to get into your company devices. Once you know which VPN your company is using, make sure you install it for your work-related activities.

Lack Of Cybersecurity Vigilance

Many companies now have specific teams in place to monitor cybersecurity. They keep an eye on any breaches and lapses in the system. Then, they tackle these issues as fast as possible. With remote work, they cannot keep a direct eye on the network, so these lapses may increase significantly.

To solve this issue, employee training is necessary. In addition, company-issued devices should have monitoring software in place. This can prevent a lot of security breaches and hacking attempts.

Insecure Configuration Settings

Most of the time, non-IT personnel are not aware of how important configuration settings are. Therefore, security teams can make a set of instructions for all employees to follow. Ideally, they should configure these settings themselves before issuing devices for remote work. However, this can be an extremely tedious task for large companies.

Related: Best Remote Administration Tools

Once these configuration settings are arranged for, employee devices will have some much stronger security protocols in place. If they do not configure these settings, their devices will be open for various hacks and other cybersecurity breaches.

Security Issues With Cloud Storage

Remote work meant that there was a major rush to put everything into cloud storage for common access. However, this led to a lot of issues with security. As the cloud is a largely open space, companies do not have as much control over it as they do with other storage methods.

To prevent any serious issues, companies should look into inside-out and outside-in visibility from cloud providers. Once these are present in tandem, it is much easier to keep your files safe and secure. Companies can gain this visibility using a number of various apps which specialize in corporate data protection in the cloud. These tools have become nearly essential with the increasing prevalence of remote work policies.

Inadequate Backup Systems

One of the biggest fears with remote work is data loss. If you’re working on company networks, data is protected and backed up regularly. However, you may not have the same mechanisms in place at home.

This can lead to you losing important data due to inconveniences like power outages or internet connection errors. Companies should make sure all devices have apps which back data up regularly into an approved cloud storage manager.

Data-Protection Compliance

Remote work is even more complicated due to legal issues with data protection. There are numerous state and federal laws in place which dictate how companies should protect their data. Data security teams should make sure all devices are compliant with these laws, and keep track of regular employee reports in this address.

Related: Ways to Protect Online Privacy

It may take some time to train employees to be diligent about data compliance, but it is absolutely necessary to do so.

While remote work is quite convenient in many ways, it comes with its own set of security challenges. Companies and employees need to work hand in hand to meet these challenges, so that the whole process goes by in a smooth way.