With remote users suddenly left to their own devices (literally), they may find themselves without the proper security options including:
– proper firewalls – enhanced security applications – network monitoring – ongoing security awareness training
Your business data security is more critical than ever.
As a business owner, you’ll want to ask yourself the questions below to ensure you have the correct processes, procedures and policies in place to protect your business during this critical time.
- Is multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled?
- Did employees receive guidance on how to use MFA?
- Are you using whole disk encryption to encrypt the physical hard drive of company laptops?
- Do you have the ability to remotely wipe company data from lost or stolen laptops and mobile devices?
- Did you take inventory for all work computers/devices taken home by staff?
- Do you have an email security in place such as enhanced spam filters?
- Were employees trained to recognize and report phishing attempts?
- Does your spam service allow employees to whitelist or blacklist domains to improve email security?
- Have you installed a web security app to prevent users from visiting malicious sites?
- Home networks will not block the websites that your network did and staff malware threats are elevated.
- Have you setup data loss prevention policies and/or set applicable restrictions on external file sharing?
- There is likely to be an increase in file-sharing via email, do you have collaboration software for your team to use?
- Have you created a remote work and data protection policy for employees to sign?
- As above, the threat level to your company data rises exponentially when more staff are working outside of your secured network.
- Have you conducted end-user training on remote security policies and best practices?
- Do you have monthly, or weekly, security awareness training in place?
- Is your staff continuing to follow compliance standards requires (see below)
- Do you have endpoint protection installed for all remote machines?
- Are your staff as protected at home as if they were in your protected network?
- What security applications/layers are in place?
- If you are subject to compliance regulations, do you have policies and procedures in place to ensure compliance?
- Are employees trained to enforce those policies?
- What is your incident response plan during times of company-wide remote working?
- Who is assigned to what tasks in the event of a company-wide access or data intrusion?
Final Score: _______
How did you do?!
Genuinely, I hope you did amazing! Security has become more critical than ever to keep business going, especially when you’re trying to do more, with less resources. Your technology success partner should be keeping you informed on the above:
- at Quarterly Business Reviews
- when any items above get changed or are modified
- if items above are not in place and need to be implemented
- in times of abrupt changes (Covid-19)
Questions? Concerns? – ActiveCo can help you strategize, help prevent cyberattacks and cut your IT costs up to 75% when you need it the most.
