Remote Work and Online Security

Working remote provides new opportunities for hackers and other bad actors to gain access to corporate and personal information. With more people working remotely than ever before, it’s worth taking a moment to review and upgrade your online security practices. Here are a few best practices everyone should adopt to keep data safe.

Online Security Best Practices 

Always Use a Password Manager

Your passwords should be long, random and unique for every service. If you’re still using your pet’s name with 3 instead of E for every site, you’re at risk! All it takes is for one service to lose your password and hackers can use those credentials to log in anywhere you use the same password. 

The good news is you don’t have to remember all those unique passwords because there is software that can do that for you.. Modern password managers make it incredibly easy by autofilling logins for you. A friend of mine is teaching his 2nd grader to use Lastpass–if she can do it, so can you!

Use a VPN Service 

A VPN is a service that provides an additional layer of encryption on top of all your internet access. They provide a cheap and easy way to protect yourself when using a public network (like at that local coffee shop you frequent), and add an additional layer of authentication when connecting to your office network or other critical resources.

Encrypt Your Laptop

This is so easy, in both Windows and MacOS. A quick web search will show you exactly how, and in about 5 minutes you can protect all your laptop data by encrypting all the files on your hard drive. If you lose your laptop, and someone doesn’t have the password, there’s no way they can view encrypted files and steal your data. Take the time to do this!

Use Secure File Sharing

Email isn’t really a great way to share files, particularly sensitive data like personal information, financial documents and confidential contracts. It’s not designed to be secure, and if your email is compromised, so are your files. Set up a secure file sharing system like Dropbox, Box or Google to use with your coworkers. And if you’re sending data to a 3rd party, use a secure messaging service like sendinc.com.

Get On the Same Page

It’s not enough for you to protect your computer, only to have your coworker get hacked and compromise your company’s data security. It’s important your company has a set of standards for security and that everyone follows the rules. It can be as simple as some light training and reinforcement to enact basic standards which will dramatically reduce the potential for data loss.

Take It to The Next Level 

These are the basics. If you and your company deal with confidential, personal and critical data, you need to take it up a notch. Our company is audited to the SOC2 standard, which ensures we have policies, procedures, training and systems in place across the board for high security. There are many standards out there – take the time to evaluate them and decide what’s best for your company.

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