Does Remote Work Raise Cybersecurity Issues?

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, companies have been working diligently to adapt to a changing landscape, with some even announcing long-term plans for remote work. Employees have risen to the challenge, and companies have certainly come up with out-of-the-box solutions around managing a remote workforce. 

But even with those efforts, unique challenges have come up, particularly when companies are needing to respond to concerns around cybersecurity. 

With personal and professional lives are blurred, cybersecurity issues can come up in a few different ways:

• Home Wi-Fi networks and devices are more susceptible to hacking
• Companies have less control over corporate structures, and what employees say and do
• In-person communication is replaced by virtual environments

Luckily, there are solutions out there to make remote work safe, secure, and more efficient. Several of these solutions involve convenient products and services available from Trinity.

Addressing Potential Cybersecurity Remote Work Risks 

Below are strategies around addressing cybersecurity issues that may come up with remote work, including services and products we provide that we know will make your workplaces safer as you meet your business goals.

Identify Needs Among Your Employees

Even companies who aren’t new to remote work may need to do some work around identifying blind spots when it comes to cybersecurity. Often, those blind spots arise in understanding what employees need to turn their home office into a safe, secure, and efficient working environment.

We’ll go into this next, but it’s important to identify whether your employees are even set up to work from home. Make sure you’re able to answer these two questions to allow for safe, secure working environments for your employees:

• Do my employees have the tools, e.g. the appropriate hardware, sufficient bandwidth, network access, or virtual apps for things like online scheduling or virtual meetings to be successful as a remote worker?
• Do my employees have the skills or necessary training completed to participate in the workplace on a virtual level? 

Once needs are identified, address those weak spots. Make a plan to equip your employees with what they need to be successful, whether that’s additional hardware to connect to your company’s security systems or training around phishing schemes. Some of this may be uncharted territory for your employees. A pandemic tends to create uncharted territory! 

There are already plenty of tools out there, by the way, that not only boost your data security but boost productivity among your remote workers, as well. The Trinity Multifile Uploader for Quickbase, for example, allows for efficient file management no matter where your employees are working from. 

Protect Your Data from Hackers and Phishing Scams

It isn’t surprising that a whole host of problems have cropped up from employees using their home networks and personal devices to conduct company business. Home networks just don’t have the same security and maintenance as in-house systems. A company’s IT personnel quickly address any suspicious activity as soon as it happens, keeping breaches and issues to a minimum.

Unfortunately, phishing scams (where hackers get into a company’s data systems by sending out emails that may look like they’re from company bosses) have become even more widespread with the extension of remote work.

Luckily, high-quality application development platforms like Quickbase meet all security standards to keep your data safe. Coupled with virtual training around available tools and how to spot data breaches and phishing behavior, companies can fight back against hackers.

Use Secure Tools When In-Person Communication Isn’t Possible

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when looking for ways to enhance security around remote work, even when you’re looking to do things typically done in-person.

If you’re working in any number of industries where in-person communication is needed to sign off on official documents, for example, utilizing a digital signature allows you to maintain those transactions in a safe, secure way. 

A digital signature like our own TrinitySignature is actually even more secure than the traditional paper variety. Digital signatures, also known as electronic signatures, allow the recipient to see a time stamp on when that document was signed, in effect allowing for an added layer of security on that virtual document.

And virtual meetings likely aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, either. Using a video conferencing platform with high marks for safety and security is an important step in not only keeping your company’s data safe, but keeping your employees feeling secure when participating in virtual meetings.

Have Plans in Place? Solidify Them

The pandemic likely threw a number of companies for a loop as far as preparedness is concerned. Companies needed fresh plans around how to go about handling a changing workplace, crafting long-term remote work policies, and determining what the future of work even looks like even after what could be the new normal.

After you retool your processes and come up with solutions to both support that remote workforce and improve your company’s security standards, it’s important to create ways to maintain those new standards. 

Hopefully, a pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime situation that you’ll only need to create one set of procedures for.  Still, companies should also use this time to problem-solve through other kinds of scenarios that may arise unexpectedly. While many government and medical officials saw Covid-19 coming, most businesses did not. 

Remote Work Can Be Done Safely

As tools evolve in a changing world, your company should, too, especially as it relates to cybersecurity and the health of your business. These strategies are a good start in addressing cybersecurity concerns as remote work remains the default for companies for the foreseeable future. 

Still have questions about how to keep your data and employees safe while working remotely in today’s changing world? Contact Trinity today to learn more about our solutions and how we can help.