Five remote work cybersecurity tips

Cybersecurity for remote workers

Remote work continues to be an attractive option for many businesses. Employers and workers embrace it for the flexibility it offers, but it can also invite certain security challenges.

The added cybersecurity risks of working from home are two-fold. First, dispersed endpoints—which sometimes include employees’ personal devices—increase the attack surface security teams must defend. Second, cybercriminals are motivated to take advantage of the widening security gaps remote work creates. Hackers hope remote workers will bypass best practices and provide easy access to their employers’ databases and systems. That’s why fortifying remote work cybersecurity requires security teams and the employees they serve to work in concert to minimize threats.

Is remote work safe?

Yes, a remote or hybrid work model can be very safe. It simply requires both employers and employees to be aware of remote work cybersecurity risks and use business-grade security and collaboration tools. The average home user may not automatically have the setup that businesses require to protect sensitive customer, employee, and proprietary information, but a platform with secure work tools can help you avoid some of the most serious concerns, including:

Leaked proprietary data. Businesses worry that work on a revolutionary new product can reach competitors prior its launch.

Legal and compliance issues. Legal entanglements over a failure to secure your customer data could seriously impair your company.

Brand damage. Imagine years of building trust with customers and employees being shattered by a leaked email or private salary data.

Business outages. Every minute your systems are down because of a hack, ransomware, or other cybersecurity threat translates to lost revenue.

Financial loss. Fixing systems after a breach costs time and money. And some systems simply can’t be recreated as they were if you didn’t plan ahead.

Overtaxed and understaffed IT teams. Without the right tools and strategies, the stresses of managing remote teams securely can be excessive. It can also be difficult to recruit and retain enough talented professionals to maintain a complex security landscape.

Fortunately, there are collaboration tools on the market that can be used in conjunction with security best practices to help you mitigate the risks of hybrid work—while also enhancing productivity.

Remote work cybersecurity tips

Businesses and employees have adapted productively to remote work over the last several years. With the right preventative measures and tools, they can adapt their approach to cybersecurity in home office settings just as well. The following are top work-from-home tips to stay protected anywhere.

1. Use antivirus and security software

Your business likely already uses cybersecurity tools to protect against some of the most prevalent threats, such as viruses, malware, phishing, and ransomware on corporate hardware. But if employees are using personal devices for work or to access corporate systems, they need protection too.

The best way to mitigate the cybersecurity risks of working from home is for businesses to provide or specify acceptable antivirus or security software programs and enforce their use. A traditional antivirus solution provides a single layer of protection by hunting down known threats and updating itself regularly as new threats emerge.

To close more security gaps, use a comprehensive security platform with endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities. When deployed company-wide, EDR can detect real-time threats to employee devices—no matter where they are—and respond proactively.

2. Secure home networks

Strong remote work cybersecurity depends upon a secure internet connection for each employee. When employees work from a corporate office it’s automatically more secure because IT teams control the security of the building’s internet connection. Ensuring a secure connection from home offices requires more cooperation between security teams and employees. Take these simple steps—or instruct others through them—to lessen the cybersecurity risks of working from a home internet connection:

Familiarize yourself with your router’s settings page. Most manufacturers assign the default IP address 192.168.1.1. to home routers. Go to your router’s settings page by typing that address into your browser.

Give your service set identifier (SSID) a unique name. Go to your router’s settings page and, if necessary, change the name of your network to something that doesn’t identify you personally, like a name or address.

Ensure your wireless network router has a unique password. Routers come with a default password that can be easy for malicious actors to crack. Make it more difficult for them by giving your router a strong password.

Enable network encryption. A simple way to strengthen remote cybersecurity is by setting your router to its most robust encryption setting, which is likely Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2).

Limit access to specific media access control (MAC) addresses. Each device that connects to your network has a distinct MAC address. Add specific devices to your wireless network to ensure that only those devices can access it.

Run your router’s latest firmware. Software updates and patches often address the latest threats to remote cybersecurity. Check regularly to see if yours is up to date.

Share or seek remote work cybersecurity expertise. Security professionals can proactively instruct and support others to create the most secure connection possible. Likewise, if you’re an employee working from home and aren’t sure what you could be doing to make your connection less vulnerable to attack, reach out for assistance. Keeping everyone on the same page protects your company.

3. Use a virtual private network (VPN)

An effective way employers can increase cybersecurity for remote workers is to provide them with a VPN. This is like a protected tunnel within another network connection that you can manage. All your data stays within the tunnel and never mingles with the internet at large. No one outside the VPN has permission to access it.

Employers are responsible for providing and setting up a VPN, and it’s the employees’ responsibility to use it how and when they are directed to. Having a VPN can be an enormous benefit to companies because it dramatically increases the protection of sensitive and proprietary data. It also protects employees by giving them extra peace of mind that they won’t be responsible for any remote work cybersecurity issues that arise.

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If employers give sufficient remote cybersecurity guidance to employees, VPNs can be very effective at mitigating the risks of data leaks, ransomware, and other threats. For example, it can provide an extra layer of protection when employees choose to work from a public wireless network hotspot. In that scenario, a hacker would be unable to see the employee’s internet activity. However, a VPN’s security depends heavily on the rigor of the authentication methods remote workers use to access it.

For even better protection than a VPN, consider adopting a Zero Trust security strategy. Zero Trust is a model that adapts to the complexity of remote and hybrid work by rigorously authenticating every identity based on all available data points. In this model, three principles apply to every attempt to access your systems: verify explicitly, use least privileged access, and assume a breach.

4. Use strong, secure passwords

Strong, secure passwords are an important way to prevent remote work cybersecurity issues. Employees who use hackable passwords give cybercriminals an easy way to infiltrate company resources.

Choose passwords that:

Are at least 12 characters long—although 14 is better.

Use a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

Don’t use words found in a dictionary.

Don’t include obvious connections to your identity, like your name or birthday.

Don’t connect in an obvious way to your organization or its products.

Are significantly different from your previous passwords.

Are different from those you used on other apps, sites, or accounts.

Employers can shield their organizations better by using more advanced login security methods, such as two-factor or multi-factor authentication, biometric identification, or single sign-on. Better yet, implement passwordless authentication. It eliminates the need for passwords because users verify their identity with a security key, a biometric scan, or a smartphone authenticator app. Advanced identity and access management significantly decreases the cybersecurity risk of working from home compared to relying on passwords alone. If you do rely on passwords, it’s best practice to require that employees change them regularly.

5. Use secure tools built for businesses

It may be tempting for entrepreneurial employees to go rogue with a patchwork of consumer productivity and communication solutions. But your organization is much more secure using business and productivity tools that have security like encryption baked in.

In fact, many industries require compliance with regulations that protect customer data from cybercriminals, unauthorized access, and accidental deletion. Whether it’s chatting, video conferencing, or secure file-sharing systems, the right tools make a huge difference in security and can save your business from the consequences of a breach of sensitive information..

If it’s your responsibility to recommend or deploy the productivity and collaboration tools, ensure they are secure and built for business use. Cybersecurity in home offices is more effective when all workers have the same, robust tools installed.

Work securely, anywhere

Remote and hybrid work can be as safe and productive as onsite work with the right tools in place. Microsoft 365 seamlessly connects teams for highly productive, secure collaboration—no matter where they are.

Find out how Microsoft 365 supports efficient work from home with peace of mind built in.

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