Keeping Your Remote Team Safe from Cyberterrorism
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies were forced to shift their operations to be remote rather than in-person. While the pandemic has since lessened in severity, many companies are opting to keep remote working options available for employees. While this can be beneficial in several ways, it can also come with its fair share of problems.
One of the biggest problems around remote teams is the threat of cyberattacks and cyberterrorism. Thankfully, there are ways that you can ensure that your team is being safe and guarding themselves against cyber threats. Understanding cyberterrorism and cyber threats can help you keep your team safe from any looming hackers or cyber terrorists waiting to strike.
What Is Cyberterrorism?
While many are familiar with cyberattacks, cyberterrorism is a less heard phrase that some may be unfamiliar with. Put simply, cyberterrorism is typically defined as cyberattacks carried out on a large scale by non-government organizations to cause fear or harm.
Companies that have been victims of severe and damaging cyberterrorism attacks include T-Mobile and SolarWinds. When targeting companies such as these, cyber attackers typically aim to harvest the personal information of customers to use for nefarious purposes.
Ways to Keep Your Team Safe
Now that it seems like remote work is here to stay, it’s important to take steps to help keep your team safe from cyber-attacks. By following a few guidelines, you can help make it more difficult for hackers to endanger your employees’ and company’s private information.
Train Employees Thoroughly
If your remote employees are unaware of the threats that may be looming around every corner, they may be a little more cavalier on their work laptops than they should be. Being that personal information and the well-being of the company are at stake, it’s important to be thorough with training.
When holding training sessions, it can be helpful to enlist the help of an expert who is knowledgeable about the topic. This way employees will be able to ask questions and gain a deeper understanding of how to act safely on work laptops along with what red flags to look out for when it comes to cyber-attacks.
Set Out Guidelines for Remote Employees
In order to keep everyone safe, it’s important to lay out clear guidelines for all remote employees. These guidelines can range from not downloading anything onto work laptops to strict guidelines around what websites can be visited on work laptops. Without guidelines, employees may engage in unsafe behavior online without being aware of the proper precautions.
One examples of a guideline would be instructing employees to be careful about which emails one opens, as nefarious emails can infect a laptop with malware and possibly even give a hacker access to your company’s network. With guidelines such as this, employees will be safer in their use of digital devices as it pertains to work.
To take even more precautions, your business could enroll employees in a cybersecurity bootcamp which would help prepare them on what cyber-attacks are and how to prevent them. Cybersecurity experts always say that employees are the weakest link when it comes to getting access into business networks.
Implement Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication is a widely used cybersecurity measure that even companies who don’t work remotely typically utilize. For remote employees, two-factor authentication is a must when it comes to accessing company-related files. Though it may seem like a minor inconvenience to some, it can actually protect an entire company from hackers.
While two-factor authentication is not the only form of cybersecurity one should have, it should definitely be implemented in every digital work environment — remote or otherwise. This way an additional layer of security is present whenever employees access a company-related file.
Make Sure Employees Avoid Public WiFi
While avoiding public WiFi may seem obvious to some, not all remote workers are cybersecurity experts. Avoiding public WiFi should be a strict rule that every remote employee is made aware of before beginning remote work.
While this may be more streamlined for full-time or part-time employees, it’s important to stress this to freelance and contract workers if they will be gaining access to your company’s files or network. By avoiding public WiFi, the chance of an employee getting hacked is decreased significantly.
Provide All Employees with a VPN Subscription
VPNs can make a huge impact when it comes to remote employees accessing your company’s files and network. A VPN can help your employees stay private while online, deterring hackers from being able to easily hack into one of your employee’s computers.
Given the importance of VPNs, you should make sure to have your company provide subscriptions to a VPN service rather than just asking employees. If an employee puts off getting a VPN subscription or doesn’t get one altogether, that could mean big trouble for your company.
Keeping Your Employees and Company Safe
In today’s new age of normalized remote work, it’s important to take significant precautions to keep your employees and company safe from cybercriminals. As the digital world becomes more of a part of our daily lives, the threat of cyber-attacks becomes more serious with each passing day.
Rather than take any chances, make sure to educate your employees on the risks that could be looming around every digital corner and the effect that a lack of safety can have on the lives of scores of innocent people.