Remote work is a growing trend that is likely to take over a large percentage of the labor market soon. A study by the Swiss company IWG found that 70% of professionals work remotely at least one day a week, while 53% work remotely for half a week.
The numbers are likely to increase as remote work seems to be more positive, healthy and encouraging for professionals.
Many employees are planning to create a remote work lifestyle for the rest of their careers, and there is a strong need for employees to adapt their companies to remote work solutions for the workforce.
While setting up remote work systems for a company is a great way to reduce operating costs and keep your staff happy, it is important to consider safety measures and keep the whole team informed of the attitudes that need to be taken - and should not - take, to keep the business network secure.
Everyone already knows you – and your remote employees need a good antivirus program to protect devices from malware and viruses. In this article, you'll learn some other actions you and your employees can take to keep data and your network protected.
Practice and protocols
The first thing you can do as a manager or business owner to help your employees is provide them with training. Remote employees must be clearly aware of all the risks and threats to which they are exposed. Also, make sure you have a clear written protocol document to share usage policies with employees so they can always come back to it if they have any questions.
Installation Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
If your team is working remotely, they should avoid downloading business stuff on their devices, which is inherently less secure. Windows Remote Desktop Protocol is an application that allows employees to access a remote desktop within the company's internal protocol.
This avoids the unnecessary copies important files and downloading files to unsecured desktops.
Please note that it is the administrator's responsibility to restrict user rights over the network and to remove rights from any users who stop working or abuse their network rights.
The remote Employees should always use a VPN on all devices they use to access company data.
VPN is an essential measure to keep your company data secure, especially if employees use RDP. If they use RDP over a public network, then the entire company network is open and data entering and leaving the desktop network is easily accessible to hackers.
Be sure to include the VPN in your security protocol and increase the need for activation every time your employees work.
Employees should avoid browsing public Wi-Fi
Even if your employees use a VPN, an extra security measure is to avoid browsing public Wi-Fi. This is to prevent any information leakage in the event that an employee forgets to enable the VPN or if the VPN stops working.
If your employee absolutely must use a public Wi-Fi for any reason, then a kill switch is an extra security measure to add. The kill switch terminates the connection if the VPN server goes down. Besides, a VPN that uses a method encryptions AES 256-bit is the most secure proposal for public Wi-Fi networks.
Use strong and unique passwords for each platform / application
Enhance a strong and unique password policy for your employees. Although creating a password can make life easier, it can be costly. Keeping all the passwords in an encrypted document in a protected folder can be a good idea to avoid losing passwords.
Use screen locks on work laptops
Suggest that your employees set up on-screen passwords for extra protection on their work laptops, smartphones and any device they use. Potential intruders exploit any security vulnerabilities they may find and much data can be stolen from physical access to devices. If devices are lost or stolen, all sensitive information is in the hands of third parties and the device is no longer protected.
Keep USB and external drivers protected
Encourage your employees to keep USB drivers and external drivers in secure locations and set passwords to restrict access to them.
Remove company logos from wallpapers or cases for laptops
Make it a rule for your employees to avoid sticking company logo stickers or using them as background images on computer. This way you can avoid being distracted by potential intruders targeting your company data.
