By: Clay Miller, CTO, SyncDog
Telecommuting isn’t a new concept. In fact, the term was coined all the way back in 1972 (you can dive deeper into the history of telecommuting here). What is new is the popular demand for businesses of all sizes to offer employees flexible working options across a myriad of industries and experience levels. A recent study found that nearly 68% of workers around the world work remotely at least once per month. As more and more technologies and software have emerged that make remote work increasingly similar to the in-office experience, without the pesky commute, threats to corporate information and data security have grown.
The Main Challenge of Remote Work Security
The biggest challenge in securing remote workers is that each worker’s environment is essentially uncontrollable. Even if their home networks are secure, there is no guarantee they will not be working from coffee shops, airports, and hotels. The hazards of public WiFi are well-documented, from Man-in-the-Middle attacks to login credential vulnerability.
Roadblocks to Effective Employee Security Training
Organizations may attempt to provide training and enforce policies, but most workers cannot be expected to configure their home networks for optimal security. Businesses also cannot feasibly provide training for a wide variety of home network setups, hardware manufacturers, etc. If such training were to occur, there is then the human factor of people falling for scams and malicious phishing content.
So What Can a Business Do?
The best things that companies can do is encourage employees to have strong passwords set on their router, use strong passwords on their connected devices, avoid password reuse, avoid public wifi, and utilize encryption on all their devices. Outside of that, the businesses themselves will need to implement protocols and technologies such as a containerized workspace across their workers’ devices that keep them secure even if they are working on compromised networks or environments.
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SyncDog is the creator of Secure.Systems that delivers a seamless mobile workspace protected through a FIPS 140-2 compliant, AES 256-bit encrypted application. Get in touch with our team today to request a demo!
