If you’re running any kind of company, chances are you had to quickly switch to a remote work system due to the lockdown. While this new work method has many exciting possibilities, it also exposes your company to some new business cyber security risks.
So how can you keep your organization safe without compromising on productivity? This article gives some helpful hints on keeping your company secure while your staff work from home.
1. Use a VPN
While you might be familiar with VPNs as a means to access geographically restricted websites and services, you can also use them for business cyber security.
The best business cyber security practices involve using VPNs because they allow you to encrypt your network traffic. This makes it a lot more difficult for any bad actors to incept it.
If you’re nout sure which VPNs will suit your needs, below is a quick rundown on some of the best VPNs on the market right now.
- ExpressVPN – Known for blazing fast speeds!
- Surfshark – Packed with features.
- NordVPN – Best for reliability & security.
- IPVanish – Best for beginners.
2. Don’t Use Public Wifi
You need to make it a company policy not to allow your workers to use public wifi networks when working. When you use public wifi, the things you send over the network could easily be intercepted by cybercriminals.
You need to make sure that when working from home that people only use secured networks from a trusted provider. While working out in a cafe might be fun, it’s a terrible practice from a cyber security perspective.
3. Home Routers
Even if your workers only connect to your company through their home networks, this is still a risk if that network hasn’t been properly secured. One of the most important business cyber security tips is to make sure your employees are using secure routers.
Some employees will keep their home router on the default user name and password. This is a terrible security practice as it means that cybercriminals could easily access that network.
Any router that hasn’t been secured like this is almost as bad as using a public wifi network. It might make sense to purchase routers for your employees that you know have good security.
This will also help you to make sure every employee has their router configured correctly and securely. Doing this when everyone is using different models and brands would be incredibly time-consuming.
4. Home Computers
You should also be cautious about allowing your employees to use their home computers. This is important business cyber security advice as home computers might have all kinds of malware or security vulnerabilities.
There’s really no way for you to know how secure or insecure a personal computer is. If you really want to make sure everything is locked down, you should supply your employees with company laptops.
This enables you to have much more control over the devices your employees use.
5. Web Browsers
It’s no surprise that some of the biggest and most popular web browsers are actually quite unsafe. Most poeple don’t think about things like this, but web browsers like Google Chrome are stealing your data every time you hit the “search” button.
While you’re not likely to get any viruses from Google Chrome, if you don’t want your personal data to be stolen, then you and your employees should be using a different web browser.
A better alternative would be the Brave Browser from Brave Software, and switching from Chrome to Brave is extremely easy. Once you download Brave, all your Chrome bookmarks and settings will be transferred over as well.
In addition, with the Brave browser, you will NEVER be pestered with advestisements and Brave does NOT steal or take any of your personal data like Chrome does either. You can safely search the web knowing you’re secure from your data being stolen.
What’s great is Brave has a mobile browser for Android and iOS as well.
These Tips Can Help With Business Cyber Security
If you’re a company that recently switched to a home-working setup, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the cyber security considerations.
If you want to make sure there are no holes in your business cyber security, it really makes sense to work with a managed IT services company.
If you want to work with a professional company that can patch up any security holes in your organization, connect with us today.