The pandemic was instrumental in changing our working habits and most of the time, those working habits have been changed for the better. We are no longer working impossible hours in an office and then having a dreadful commute on the way home in rush hour, because we are doing better by working from home. Instead of worrying about whether we are keeping up with our carbon footprint, we are lowering that by being at home most of the time and not being on the road. One thing that we can say about the pandemic in a positive light is that we are now able to be at home more often and therefore be more comfortable while we work.
The only problem here is that we are less secure. You might be thinking what is adware? What is a VPN? What is a voiceover protocol? What is a cyber security attack? These are all such valid questions when it comes to working from home and not knowing what it means to be secure. The hybrid model of people working from home more often is excellent, and you may find that your productivity is better and your efficiency is better as a result. But it doesn’t come with that same level of security. Instead of worrying about being at home and ending up with a cyber security attack, you need to do what you can to protect your personal devices and your data. So, let’s take a look at what you could be doing at home to stay secure.
- Stay in contact with your employer. It’s actually one of the smartest ways that you can avoid a cybersecurity attack because the more in touch with your employer you are, the more you will feel comfortable enough to communicate when there’s a problem. You shouldn’t ever feel like you’re walking into the headteacher’s office about to get in trouble just because you are in the office, so you have to make sure that you are keeping the lines of communication open and being aware of any new policies to help you to keep your business safe. You want to ensure that as an employee, you are doing what you can to prove that flexibility is worth it, and if you are dealing with cybersecurity attacks often, your employer could call you back to the office rather than allowing you to work from home.
- Speak to the technology lead at the company. What is your employer putting into place to ensure that you are all safe? There are often technology tools that can be used to keep devices safer, but the only person who is going to be able to help you with that is currently sitting in the office. The cybersecurity tools that your employer uses are designed to protect you and your information as well as their interests, cybercriminals will have an interest in both of these. Whether you are in an office or you are at home, you need to ensure that there is firewall and antivirus protection as well as features such as VPN like we mentioned earlier. You could also install multi factor authentication on your work devices.
- Ask about security software. What investment is your employer making into security software for your devices at home? The best way to approach this is to find out what they would be doing if you were still in the office and figuring it out from there. You want to reduce the likelihood of a virus infecting your machine, and the best antivirus software can provide regular updates too which ensures that you are protected against the newest cyber threats out there. Trusted security software can offer other benefits, too because it can stop you from being phished.
- Look at your router. Even if you’re working remotely for one or two days a week, you should strengthen the security of your home Wi-Fi network router. This starts with creating a very strong password, and then making sure that you are definitely having the benefit of a private connection. You can also change the SSID of your router, but that might be more complicated so you should look to your IT team leader to find out how to do that.
- Keep Zoom meetings safe. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom have helped people to stay at home and manage to stay away from the office during those annoying monthly meetings. You need to be able to still communicate with everybody else though, so making sure that you collaborate means keeping things safe. When you download any of the services that we’ve listed above, only download it from the provider themselves and make sure that you’re going to the official websites. Set up unique meeting IDs for each of your meetings, to.
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