How to Mitigate Cybersecurity Risks When Working from Home

Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, TeknaByte knows that more employees across the country are working from home than ever before. With companies being forced to react in order to maintain productivity, most often with strict timelines and without the careful consideration needed, there are a number of cybersecurity risks that we should all be aware of when working from home. Although we have been forced to adapt and have changed our daily lives in the wake of the coronavirus, cybersecurity risks are still prevalent and shouldn’t be ignored in the process.

Today, TeknaByte will be detailing how you and your employees can successfully mitigate cybersecurity risks when working from home. With many IT specialists now supporting fully remote teams for the first time ever, it is of the utmost importance that you operate with the same amount of caution (if not even more) than when everyone was operating in the office. After all, with an increase in the amount of employees who are now at risk of falling prey to cyberhackers, business owners must leverage new policies and technologies in order to reinforce the cybersecurity of their businesses, employees, and customers. Let’s get started!

Employ Basic Input and/or Output System Technology

Hardware platform security has become more important than ever before in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Experienced hackers are well-equipped to compromise or bypass operating systems’ security protections either by compromising the BIOS software underneath the OS or by gaining root access. Now that our nation’s workforce is working primarily from home, business owners must ensure that their remote employees are given capabilities such as BIOS resilience.

So, what can you do? Technologies such as self-healing BIOS can effectively help mitigate cybersecurity risks of attacks occurring below the OS in areas where both detection and remediation are challenging. By having these safeguards in place, business owners can ensure that their employees will not need to replace or reinstall hardware. Self-healing BIOS also means that you will be able to provide both the detection and automatic recovery of the firmware if BIOS corruption or compromise were to occur due to malware.

Streamline Administrator Rights and Employee Credentials

While both credential and access management have been a challenge for IT teams for a long time, streamlining administrator rights and employee credentials is more important now than ever before. Addressing the basics in terms of ensuring that users don’t have administrator rights and only have access to the repositories, systems, and networks that they need and only for the length of time that they need them, goes a very long way in reducing the risk of credential theft. As a result, you can also mitigate the risk of the malicious access to your business’s more sensitive data and systems.

Use the Right Strategies Against Unsecure Access Points

The times have passed where work was completed only within the confines of the corporate network and its access points. Although we began to see this change long before the coronavirus pandemic, it should be noted that the pandemic has caused an almost overnight shift into work being completed exclusively within the four walls of a home office.

With the majority of the U.S. population using their work devices at home, it is truly only a matter of time before workers across the globe start heading back to their traditional workspaces and various other settings for work. For this reason, addressing the risks posed by potentially logging into a rogue access point should be of the most crucial consideration. Your employees must be diligent in ensuring that they are not logging in to the wrong Wi-Fi network, and your IT specialists should continue to hold employee training sessions surrounding the very real danger of unsecured access points.

Develop a “Better Safe Than Sorry” Mindset

One of the best ways to mitigate cybersecurity risks when working from home is to develop a “better safe than sorry” mindset with zero trust security. It is an undeniable reality that cyberattackers are becoming more and more sophisticated day by day. By adopting a “better safe than sorry” mindset, you can work to assume a “guilty until proven innocent” security approach. This is all about granting access and privileges to users on a strictly “need-to-know” basis. You, your business, your employees, and your customers will be much better off in the long run.

Cybersecurity That You Can Count On

Cybersecurity is more important now more than ever. If you are searching for the best cybersecurity available to your business and employees, look no further than TeknaByte. As Indianapolis’s top IT consulting and management firm, we understand that hackers are constantly looking for ways to gain access to your most sensitive data and systems. Don’t grant them access! Work with our specialists to reinforce your business’s cybersecurity measures. There’s no better time than now! Contact us today with any questions. We look forward to working with you.