There are a lot of great reasons to allow your employees to work from home instead of making them come into the office every day. It is convenient for your employees, but they are also more likely to be productive, which is great for your business. However, working from home comes with a lot of challenges too.
Security is a huge concern, topping the list of priorities for IT administrators for the second half of 2021 and into 2022. After all, when employees work from home, you can’t keep a close eye on the devices they are using and how they are using them.
That doesn’t mean your business and its systems have to be more at risk! It just means you have to get smart about how you support your employees as they work safely from home.
A few tech tips for helping your employees work safely from home include:
- Make sure all employees use a VPN
- Provide employees with work devices
- Require automatic updates
- Use access control
- Provide employees with a password manager
Make Sure All Employees Use a VPN
Using a VPN is the most secure way to work. That’s because it enables a user to receive and send data across public networks through an encrypted connection. It’s as if your employees were working on a secure network on-site, but instead, they are working from home or at their local coffee shop.
Don’t assume that your employees know to use a VPN, and don’t rely on them to secure a VPN themselves. Instead, provide them with their own VPN and make sure they understand the importance of using it, even if it means doing some training.
Provide Employees With Work Devices
It may be convenient for employees to pay bills with the same device they use for work, but that can cause a lot of problems. You never know when a device has been compromised. If one device is used for everything, all of the data on that device could end up in the hands of hackers.
This is important because employees tend to behave differently when it comes to personal matters online than they do professional ones. For example, bad personal passwords could compromise their computer, even if their professional passwords are strong, leaving all data on the computer susceptible to attack. By providing employees with separate computers and devices, you can reduce the chances of compromised data, even if their personal data is stolen.
Require Automatic Updates
It’s easy to schedule automatic updates in the office when everyone is at home for the night. It’s not so easy if your employees work from home, especially if they work flexible hours.
Find a way to require automatic updates so devices, systems, and programs are all up-to-date. If you don’t, you may find that your employees keep putting them off, which means they could be working without important security updates, putting company data at risk.
Use Access Control
Cybersecurity is a challenge, whether you’re at home or in the office. No matter where your employees work, it’s important to use access control.
The fewer people who have access to sensitive information, the better. Instead of providing all of your employees with access to one large database, divide areas of information that can only be accessed by certain employees who actually need to access that information. When you follow the principle of least privilege, you can ensure that not all of your information is compromised when one employee experiences a cyberattack.
Provide Employees With a Password Manager
Password managers are great because they prevent you from having to remember all of your passwords. When you don’t have to commit all of your passwords to memory, you’re more likely to choose complex passwords that are more difficult to hack. That’s why it’s important to provide your employees with a password manager.
Don’t assume your employees will take care of their own password manager. Instead, provide them with a manager and host training seminars on good passwords and why they are so important. You’ll get your employees to choose better passwords. Not to mention, they are less likely to be annoyed when they have to change their passwords again if they have access to a password manager.
Letting your employees work from home can be great, as long as you aren’t up at night worrying about the security of your business. Use tech to your advantage so both you and your employees can enjoy the benefits of working from home.