While the entire world is struggling with the pandemic COVID-19, there is another struggle going on. Offices are now isolated and people are running businesses from home. Employees matter and so does the business. This is the major reason why ‘work from home’ culture has been actively adopted by organizations worldwide.
However, work from home comes with its own drawbacks. Offices have stronger cyber security infrastructure within the organization along with a dedicated security team that continuously monitors suspicious activities. Even with such stringent monitoring, cyber attacks still occur on organizations. One can imagine how vulnerable cyber security becomes when employees work from home.
In a research conducted for February and March, it was realized that:
There has been a whopping 600% increase in cyber threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 40% of companies have reported an increase in cyberattacks since they have enabled work from home policy for employees.
Following a few simple security measures can allow employees to safely work from home.
1. Provide cyber security awareness to employees
Employees working from home must be provided with the knowledge to identify cyber-attacks such as awareness against phishing emails, risks associated with the use of public Wi-Fi, to ensure the security of the devices being used for work.
2. Secure medium of communication
Always use a secure medium of communication for official purposes. Make sure that security protocols such as DMARC are set in your email domain to secure the medium against any attempt of spoofing or abuse.
3. Deploy a phishing incident response team
In these crucial times when businesses are being hit hard, negligence to security is the most dangerous situation for any organization. Every single effort matters and each form of vulnerability has to be taken into consideration. Since the majority of cyber attacks occur via emails. Therefore, a Phishing Incident Response tool is the need of the hour. A single vigilant employee can save the entire organization. A phishing incident tool empowers employees with the capability to report suspicious emails.
4. Deploy a VPN
Deploy a VPN for secure data transfer between the core system and work systems that employees are using remotely. It adds on as an additional layer of security by encrypting data while travelling.
5. VDI
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) allows employees to work in a virtual environment as if they are connected to company’s local network from any place, at any time and from any device that is connected with the Internet. With VDI, data is stored on a server rather than the individual system. Not only does it significantly lower down risks to data but also, a lesser amount of bandwidth is required to store it.
6. Encourage employees to use cloud services
A very convenient approach is to encourage employees to use cloud services like doc, spreadsheet, etc. since this will minimize the risk to data as it is not stored locally.
7. Deploy an MDM solution
Deploying an MDM solution helps the organization in retaining control over business-related sensitive data. The solution allows administrators to remotely lock the devices and wipe all the data in case the device gets stolen. This prevents sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands.
In case, you are still unsure about how you can keep your organization secure, we are providing a 30-day free cyber health checkup for your organization. This will consist of free cyber security consultation and solutions including:
- Cyber-attack simulation and awareness tool ThreatCop,
- SaaS-based email authentication and anti-spoofing solution KDMARC,
- Anti-phishing, fraud monitoring & take-down solution KPMonitor,
- Phishing incident response tool TAB,
- Risk detection & threat analysis and
- Code risk review.
Let’s pledge to support each other in these difficult times and make sure that the human race survives and thrives once again!
Email us at sales@kratikal.com to know more about the free cyber health checkup.
