Securing your remote team during an emergency
During an emergency, you may need to quickly send people home without much notice.
If your office setup relies on the use of desktop computers, you probably won’t have time to organise laptops for your team to take home with them. Your business could find itself in a situation where staff are relying on their personal home computers to continue working.
Even if you do have work computers your staff can take home, the security of these devices will still need to be maintained, albeit remotely, and they’ll no doubt be connected to whatever home network your team members have access to.
Whichever position you find yourself in, your staff will no longer be working from the office in a controlled environment. Let's go through some things you’ll want to think about moving forward.
Your workforce is distributed, unmonitored and stressed.
You can’t do much about that, but you can give your team guidance on how to meet your expectations when it comes to keeping your business secure.
Encourage your team to stay secure when working from home
Cybercriminals are shifting their attention from offices to people’s homes in an attempt to get into your business. As a business, you now need to care about how staff operate from home to keep your business secure.
Sharing guidance with your team around the cybersecurity measures you expect to be in place when working from home can reduce the number of questions they’ll have and relieve some of their stress and anxiety. It will also help you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve done what you can to ensure things are as cyber fit as they can be during this time.
Everyone needs to play a role so that we can all stay in business.
Protect your business when staff are working from home
Timing when to share messages around security is important, so be mindful of when and how you deliver them. Everyone’s priority is towards just staying operational but don’t wait too long to remind everyone of the importance of staying secure to avoid things getting even worse.
Explain to your team that when working remotely, treat their home office as an extension of the work office.
Remind staff that your information security policy applies wherever they are working.
If necessary, update your processes around reporting incidents or anything suspicious and reshare it so everyone is clear on what to do.
Share guidance on how your team can continue to protect your business while working from home.
As a start, we recommend sharing our “Staying Cyber Fit while working from home” article with your team for specific measures they can take to protect your business as well as our free checklist they can use to keep track of what’s in place. We’ve only listed steps you and your team should be prioritising right now in this post to help everyone focus on what’s important. An explanation of these concerns, how someone can compromise your specific business, and a more detailed list of specific priorities can be found in our Cyber Fitness Platform.
If you don’t already have an information security policy or incident reporting process, check out our Cyber Fitness Platform to start building one in less than 5 minutes.