Mike is the Editorial Director at Lendza
The landscape of labor is changing. Most of us have already seen it coming: the slow but impending digitization of everything. However, the global pandemic really sped things up, didn’t it? Recent statistics even suggest that most of the people who transitioned to remote working have no intention of returning to a traditional employment setting even after the health crisis.
There are definitely steps that we can do to influence our employees’ work setup as their employers, but the decision will still be up to them in the end. That’s why we believe that the best step for us is to come up with a crisis management plan that incorporates the risks involved in remote working. Taking a step further, we strongly feel that the biggest risk involves cybersecurity.
In this article, we seek to talk about two things. First, we want to list down the cybersecurity risks that employees can expect (and thus, need to know). Second, we also want to share with you some quick steps to mitigate them.
Top Remote Work Cybersecurity Risks
Here are the top three most common cybersecurity threats that remote workers and their clients (or employers) are faced with:
1. Phishing
Phishing remains to be one of the most pressing cybersecurity problems for traditional and remote workers alike. It is a type of attack where a hacker creates a legitimate-looking website to trick people into entering their login credentials.
It can come in many forms. We’ve received reports of phishing in seemingly genuine employee portals and website login pages. It is still more common to get attacked via email, though.
To make matters worse, most of us (and our employees) already have an established idea of what a phishing email looks like. These assumptions can then influence our decision-making process, making it easier for us to fall prey to such attacks. In truth, there are a lot of phishing emails that look perfectly credible. Some of them are even sophisticated enough to deceive even the strictest email filters.
2. Weak Network
A lot of companies place considerable investment into securing their networks. Most prefer the assistance of cybersecurity companies and consultants. After all, they already have established network security products and related services ready for their clients to sign up for.
There are some who prefer to keep things in-house instead. This is certainly a wise (and more affordable) move depending on the kind of talent you have.
The real challenge, though, is the fact that your remote workers won’t really have the same level of security. It doesn’t help that home router software is rarely updated. What’s worse is that a lot of us don’t even have a premium firewall at home. These certainly create a lot of opportunities that hackers can take advantage of.
3. Human Error
Finally, there is a huge percentage of cyber attacks that happen just because of human error. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an employer, a traditional employee in an office cubicle, or a home-based freelancer. Anyone can commit mistakes that can make them more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Here’s a quick list of the most common errors for your reference:
- Creating weak passwords
- Creating a universal password for all your logins
- Writing your passwords on paper
- Storing your passwords on an unsecured digital device
- Entering your password on a shared computer
- Letting others borrow your computer and other digital devices
- Letting others borrow your credentials
- Relying too much on the remember feature of your digital device for your logins
- Leaving your digital devices unattended
- Mistakenly posting the answers to your security questions on social media
There are definitely other circumstances out there that cybercriminals can exploit, but the ones we have listed above take the cake of being the most prevalent.
Quick Cybersecurity Steps
Anyway, let’s move on to the steps that even your remote workers can do at home to quickly minimize risks:
Training
Cybersecurity companies and consultants don’t just provide products and sound advice. Some of them also provide cybersecurity awareness programs. Advanced training on the subject can significantly decrease the risk of phishing and other cybercrimes.
While signing up for a ready-made curriculum remains to be the ideal option, this doesn’t mean that you can’t train your employees in-house. Even a simple PowerPoint presentation that you can distribute to your remote workers is better than absolutely nothing, after all.
Improved Network
The cheapest thing that you can do to decrease the risks of an unsecured home network is to simply require your remote workers to use a router equipped with the latest encryption features enabled.
This will encourage them to be more vigilant when it comes to updating their home routers.
The best decision, though, is to play a more active role in your remote worker’s network connection. Give your employees firewalls. Upgrade their network plans. Invest in your remote worker’s gear.
These steps would certainly require a hefty sum of investment especially if the majority of your workers are currently working at home. It’s still worth it, though.
Presence of Mind
Lastly, you can significantly decrease human error by just encouraging your employees to focus on their job and be more mindful of both their online and offline activities.
To match the previous section, here are some equally quick solutions to the problems we’ve posted earlier:
- Create strong passwords by mixing alphanumeric symbols with special ones. Don’t make a password out of a word or statement. Make it random and impossible to guess.
- Create different passwords for various online accounts, logins, and more.
- Refrain from writing your password on paper. At the very least, don’t label that paper as “password”. It’s a rookie mistake.
- Don’t use other people’s computers and electronic devices, especially if it will require you to log in to anything. On the other hand, don’t let others borrow your computer, digital device, or log-in credentials as well.
- Don’t make a list of all your passwords and put it on a single device. You’ll be putting yourself into a significantly vulnerable spot should you somehow misplace that device by accident.
- Lastly, don’t post anything related to your security questions online. Even something as simple as your dog’s name can be exploited at the hands of the wrong people.
