5-Step Cyber Protection Plan for Employees Working from Home

It is quite a challenge to protect employees while they are working from home. Many IT teams find it difficult to pull this task off. As the organizations are following the government’s rules and shifting their offices to employees’ homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber attacks are increasing as well putting companies at more risks.

Home security networks are less secure than the company networks which puts the employees working from home at a greater risk of falling for cyberattacks like phishing or business compromising emails.

There already has been an increase in the CEO impersonation attacks where cybercriminals impose themselves as some high-level employees like the CEO of the company and request to make certain payments. Since the users are at home, resting, there is no one to double-check their emails hence the compromising risk is very high.

There have also been specific COVID-19 scams where attackers impose certain government agencies like WHO that obliges users to click on malicious web pages, ransomware, and malware. Although we are amidst a global crisis, it is still not surprising that these threats are gradually emerging.

Additionally, as the people are working from home, the ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) arrangement has been on the rising curve recently. It has become quite popular with almost 60% of businesses granting people to utilize their devices for work. This makes it even more difficult for companies to figure out whether a certain employee is following a protocol or not and adds more security issues.

How can employees work from home securely?

Many security platforms can help employees a lot to work from home.

1. Email Security

The primary cause of security breaches for organizations is email threats. Email security risks are too challenging for remote workers. Several employees are dependent on email communications to send confidential documents to each other while they are working from home. Hence, there is a likely higher chance of impersonation and phishing attacks to occur.

There are, however, a wide number of email security solutions that can keep the employees’ communication secure. Emails first arrive from the internet and then are encrypted by the Email Gateway. The email then passes via the Office 365 servers, if it is found safe to send, into the user’s inbox. Regardless of the place of the acceptance of email, the recipients and their information are still protected.

You will find some email security vendors that are granting each user to access their email security platform free of cost for 60 days until the Coronavirus crisis. This is an amazing option if you are having issues with email security threats however cannot afford a thrifty and expensive cybersecurity solution.

It is one of the best email security solutions that utilize machine learning to abruptly remove malicious emails and phishing URLs. There are no MX record changes necessary for this and it is installed in a few minutes.

The 60-day offer is entirely free. We can help you set up an account if you are interested in this software.

2. Business Password Manager

This is quite crucial for every employee to have especially for those who are working from home. Such platforms can manage complex passwords for you. This reassures you that all your accounts are safe. It restricts employees to use passwords that can be cracked easily and not use the same password for multiple accounts.

This is quite crucial for people who are working remotely as this makes sure that they follow the company password policy. Several good Password Managers grant the administrators to set certain rules regarding password length and the duration after which it needs to be updated.

If you want to collaborate with your team on projects while you are working remotely, these platforms grant you easier ways to share the passwords to different accounts.

3. Security Awareness Training

The Security Awareness Training platform determines your skills to spot any malicious emails. They dish out fake phishing threats to check if people require more security awareness and training or not. After this, they offer training for people who require better protection against these threats.

It is very crucial for people working from home to be security conscious. As they are unable to ask people in the office for a different opinion, they need to be aware of the difference between a genuine and a fake email. Those working from home will most probably communicate with their colleagues. A brilliant hacker can take advantage of this predicament and gain sensitive information from a colleague. Security Awareness platform provides amazing training material that can help people spot a fake and a genuine email.

4. Email Encryption

If you are an employee following the work from the home procedure, you may be sending several emails every day. These might contain confidential and sensitive information that needs protection. One of the amazing ways of pulling this off is email encryption.

It is quite easy to send internal emails where both the receiver as well as the sender utilize a common encryption service. There needs to be verification between both the parties but the email can be read through Outlook. This implies that the attached documents and email communications will be safe even if the remote worker’s device is stolen or lost. This also allows the admins to look where their employees are sending their encrypted emails. Hence, it decreases the risk of employees sharing limited content without access.

5. DNS Web Protection

DNS Web Protection platforms offer content filtering and anti-virus protection. 

These products are quite important to protect the remote employees that are based in the cloud. They can be installed easily on a laptop and offer protection on any kind of network.  This is significant for those who are working from home. 

There are also reporting capabilities offered by DNS Web Protection services. This reassures you that everyone is safely browsing through the net and are aligned with the company policy during work hours.

Synopsis

In the current business scenario, work from home has become the new normal. With this, an additional protection layer has to be implemented by companies for their employees. The above listed are the effective cyber protection plan that businesses should deploy for their employees working from home.

Mamta Sharma

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