Top Tips for Individuals and Businesses to enhance cyber security work from home (2021)
According to Buffer, 40% of remote workers prize (before COVID19) flexible schedules as the most significant benefit of the remote working setup. This is because workers enjoy the fact that they can spend quality time with their family, work from the comfort of their home, or work from any location they prefer. Despite the legitimate benefits, ignoring cyber security for work from home setups could be costly for businesses.
Moreover, with COVID-19 shuttering businesses all over the world, remote working became the only way for many companies to remain operational. Experts project that remote working will be the norm, even after COVID-19 is over.
What are the risks?
With remote working, data at rest and in transit concept extends beyond the corporate infrastructure boundaries. This presents the following risks:
- Loss of devices or theft — Mobile devices are vulnerable to being lost or stolen. As the current generation is highly mobile with email, corporate and other portal access, the majority have sensitive information on their devices. Furthermore, stolen devices could provide cached credentials access to attackers that could be used to login into corporate networks, vendor services, or other online accounts.
- Shoulder Surfing — It occurs when someone watches you spying over your shoulder as you use your devices.
- Device Tampering — Leaving devices unattended could be prone to threat actors taking advantage by inserting malicious hardware or software. Implications of this could be stealing information including keystrokes logging and sending it to attacker’s systems.
Is it safe to work remotely?
COVID-19 didn’t give companies much time to plan how they were going to implement the work from home setup based on their specific work requirements. Because of this rushed transition, 46% of global businesses have encountered at least one cybersecurity scare since lockdown, a study by Barracuda said.
The study also noted an overwhelming 51% increase in email phishing attacks, which is particularly alarming, given that 40% of business makers in the survey have made cuts to their cybersecurity budgets as an effort to remain liquid.
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