Secure Your Business With Remote Work Best Practices in 2022

As of 2022, we know that remote work models aren’t going anywhere, and every day these models become more prevalent for all sizes of businesses. But, replacing on-site workplaces with home offices brings many cybersecurity complications, hazards, and risks along. With the increasing number of remote employees, businesses have to secure hundreds of new connections and endpoints that access their corporate networks daily.

Unfortunately, while using legacy infrastructures, businesses can’t maintain the overall security of remote workers as these legacy solutions center security on the premises, not the network perimeter. That’s why they are inefficient and out-of-date in terms of securing remotely working employees, and these solutions must be updated because inadequately safeguarded endpoints inside the network perimeter can be exploited by cybercriminals and lead to data breaches.

These kinds of unwanted incidents can harm a business’s credibility and reputation, and cause millions of dollars in cybercrime damages. For these reasons, cybersecurity risks associated with remote workers shouldn’t be ignored, and all necessary cybersecurity actions should be taken. In this article, we gathered the best remote work practices;

let’s see each of these practices in detail.

VPNs are the first solution that comes to everyone’s mind to establish remote worker security. Investing in a reputable VPN can really improve remote work and network security. Virtual Private Network (VPN) solutions function as a bridge between employees and the resources that they want to access.

In other words, VPNs create private tunnels for employees and provide secure remote access. Additionally, VPNs provide static IP addresses for businesses and hide their network, which makes corporate networks harder to identify and target. In this regard, VPNs establish the anonymity of online appearance and activities from spying eyes.

On top of these, VPNs employ end-to-end encryption, locking every data in transit until it reaches its destination. Even if cybercriminals get a hold of a file in transit, they won’t be able to read it because end-to-end encryption makes the data in transit unreadable to third-party unauthorized entities.

So, while using a good VPN, businesses can rest assured that employees will securely access corporate resources, and nobody will be able to spy on their activities. For these reasons, businesses should invest in a reputable VPN and make it available to every employee inside the organization.

Weak passwords are often exploited by cybercriminals, and generally, employees don’t set complex, strong passwords for their accounts. That’s why businesses should put strong password protocols in place, and these protocols should consist of precise guidelines, requirements, and regular changes for passwords.

Additionally, passwords shouldn’t relate to any kind of personal information, and employees should set unique passwords for their work accounts. Because using the same password for different accounts is risky, and cybercriminals can exploit this by using methods like credential stuffing.

Even though a business puts strict password procedures in place, it isn’t enough to maintain the overall security of remote workers because solely counting on passwords means that this business will let anyone in when they enter the right credentials and passwords. For this reason, businesses need extra measures to stricken access procedures and employing multi-factor authentication (MFA) tools just delivers this need. While using MFA tools, employees will be granted access after they complete the authentication process.

MFA tools authenticate identities via various methods, and these vary depending on the MFA provider. But, generally, these tools require employees to give in additional factors to the authentication mechanism, like physical characteristics, in-app approvals, or authentication codes. This way, these tools prevent unauthorized entities and compromised accounts from gaining access to corporate resources, and they improve security.

Informing employees about the latest updates is an essential practice for securing remotely working employees because out-of-date operating systems, web browsers, or security tools can be exploited by cybercriminals. Additionally, new updates seek to fix vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and security gaps in the software, operating systems, or web browsers. Most of the time, employees ignore or forget to update these systems regularly.

That’s why businesses should send notifications to them as soon as new updates and patches become available. On top of these, businesses can advise employees to apply auto-updates to make sure nobody misses any essential updates.

Making cybersecurity training a priority is vital for your business’s growth. You can start basic cybersecurity courses for your staff and make participation mandatory. In these courses, employees can learn the basics of cybersecurity, current security risks, the most used cyber attacks, and the cybersecurity policies of your business. Additionally, you will promote a safe working environment and your employees will be more aware of current threats.

For example, they can avoid malicious websites or be more cautious when they encounter a phishing email or a message. Simply, employees can avoid all activities that might lead to cyber-attacks, and they can improve a sense of responsibility for adhering to the cyber security policies of your business. 

Last Words

In our modern age, most employees work remotely or in hybrid settings. But, work-from-home models increase security risks, and improperly safeguarded endpoints are usually exploited by cybercriminals. For these reasons, all sizes of businesses should put remote work practices in place to secure remotely working employees and decrease the risks of data breaches.