How to Protect your Business from the Downsides of Mobile working

In the last 10 years, the number of remote employees has increased by a fifth. In the UK alone, this means that nearly a quarter of a million people are now getting their working hours in from the comfort of their own home.

With technology rapidly evolving, employees no longer need to be sitting in an office or behind a desk to work productively. Research has recently shown that mobile and remote working is a good thing, with around 82% of people feeling less stressed and 80% experiencing higher morale levels.

If you are thinking of setting up a remote working system for your employees, then it is highly recommended that you consider the security of your work systems. There is always a potential opportunity for cyber criminals to attack, so ensuring that your current protocol and set up isn’t a relaxed one should be of utmost importance. Whilst you probably already have a protocol in place, it’s crucial that these are also implemented by your remote workers as well.

Set Difficult Passwords

Educating your employees on what makes a good password will make it harder for cyber criminals to access your company’s systems should laptops or phones ever be stolen. In the past, we’ve always been advised that choosing longer passwords is for the best, especially if they contain a mixture of lower and upper case letters, characters and numbers. However, these are now becoming much easier to guess so the advice now is to pick an obscure password with a combination of random words to make it harder for hackers to guess.

Limit The Use Of Public Wifi

Public wifi is extremely vulnerable to malicious attacks, so your remote workers should not be using it to do their company work. Whilst they may log in through a VPN, it takes just a few seconds during connection for cyber criminals to see an opportunity.

At the end of the day, it is up to you to set guidelines for your employees. It may be worthwhile for you to say that they can use public wifi for all non-critical business work, or you may decide that absolutely no work at all should be done using public wifi.

Encrypt Emails

Emails tend to be the first port of call for cyber criminals, with most of us receiving phishing and spam emails on an almost daily basis. Applicable for both your office workers and remote workers, all business emails should be encrypted. This ensures that the content on work emails is disguised and will protect any potentially sensitive information, meaning that only the intended recipient can view and see it.

Use Network Monitoring Software

If your business uses software to monitor the network and security that remote workers are working on, then it will assist you in identifying any potential threats. This means that web servers and emails can be monitored constantly and will monitor an external network administrator should anything go down. By monitoring any problems which may be caused by crashed or overloaded servers, or even network connections, it is just another way that you can ensure systems are secure for remote workers.

For both your in-office and remote workers, you should ask that your employees take precautions and not use their work devices when they are not working. They should be the only ones who have access to their devices for security and privacy reasons. There are so many benefits to introducing remote and mobile working, so if you do decide to introduce it into your workplace then by keeping your security levels at a maximum, this will help to protect you against cyber attacks. To protect your business even further in the event of any unfortunate circumstances, ensure that you are in contact with a dispute resolution solicitors, who will able to provide much-needed advice should a client be affected.

In these uncertain times, financial and physical peace of mind is a top priority for many. However, the cost of a security system to feel safe while working from home may be out of budget. While 62% of Americans have an unused mobile phone stashed at home, many don’t realize that it can be used as a free security camera to feel safe while quarantining.

To help those adjusting to working from their homes, our team created a guide on how to repurpose old mobile phones into a powerful minicomputer that can perform the same functions as pricey home security systems and ensure peace of mind.

Given increased concerns about personal safety and the amount of time people are spending at home, I thought your readers would find this helpful.