By Sairaman Srinivasan, Chief Strategy Officer, Consortium for Technical Education
Businesses and BCP strategists focus on implementing robust and flexible remote work policies by investing in technology and infrastructure, providing adequate support and training, and updating business continuity plans to ensure resilience and avoid disruptions.
If remote work policies during the recent pandemic did not turn out to be the solution for business continuity, there could have been several potential setbacks where businesses would have faced significant disruptions in their day-to-day operations, reduced productivity, resulting in delays and services to customers, financial losses, job security, impacting both employees and business houses as a whole.
Remote work in education enhances learning opportunities by enabling virtual classrooms, fostering resilience adaptability, and embracing new approaches to navigating challenges, and ensuring student education remains unaffected.
Organizations unable to adapt to remote work faced reputational damage, potentially affecting trust and future business opportunities. Implementing cybersecurity practices is crucial for remote workforces as they face new challenges and vulnerabilities. Robust security policies are essential for protecting against threats and attacks.
Without implementing robust security policies, Remote Work and Remote Workforces faced new challenges and vulnerabilities that organizations had to address to protect against Threats and Attacks.
Some of the best practices and tools to enhance cybersecurity for remote workforces:
For secure work practices, employees should be encouraged to create unique, complex passwords for their accounts and use multi-factor authentication (MFA) where applicable. Employees should connect their devices to secure and encrypted Wi-Fi networks when accessing company resources remotely. Also, to ensure that the endpoints and software applications are updated and patched.
A centralized managed solution facilitates monitoring, managing, and updating remote devices with software updates and security patches. Regular cybersecurity awareness and training programs will educate employees about common threats, phishing attacks, email attacks, and social engineering attack techniques. The training encourages good practices, such as recognizing suspicious emails and avoiding unverified links or downloading attachments. Regular data backups and restores should be implemented to protect and recover company assets in the event of data loss or system failure.
Moreover, Role-based Access Control provides secure access to company resources, granting privileges and permissions based on predetermined roles. Ultimately, employees should be briefed on incident response and reporting systems to take the necessary steps to escalate and report incidents immediately and efficiently. It helps to foster a culture of security within the organization.
Tools:
Endpoint Protection solutions provide a range of security features such as antivirus, antimalware, firewalls, and device restrictions to help protect endpoints, which can be centrally managed and monitored. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) creates an encrypted connection between a user’s device and the company network to ensure secure communication on the Internet. Additionally, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) can further increase security by providing an additional layer beyond passwords. Password managers can generate and store complex passwords, while encryption tools can secure sensitive data at rest and in transit. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) can be used to collect, correlate, and analyse security event data to detect potential threats. Finally, Identity Access Management (IAM) helps to secure digital assets by providing appropriate access levels and privileges to users; to access cloud-based resources within and outside the organisation.
Summary
Organizations must continuously review and update their cybersecurity policies, best practices, and tools to adapt to emerging threats and changing work environments. Conducting regular cybersecurity awareness and training programs, using communication channels like posters, mailers, and self-based learning platforms, makes the employee more vigilant, proactive, and informed of potential risks, thus reducing the likelihood of successful attacks or breaches.