During Times Like Now, It’s Important We Don’t Let Our Guard Down

The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused a surge in people working from home. This transition has been made much easier through the use of readily available tools like Zoom, and various VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). However, many businesses were not prepared to have their workforce suddenly become remote workers. Hasty preparations get made and work continues almost without stop. However, like all things, there are often finer points to consider. Some of the major issues that this new work culture has presented is security vulnerabilities, scalability, and the reliability of popular and “easy” solutions.

Is your current solution protecting your critical and sensitive data?

This might be the biggest concern. Before the pandemic and shelter in place protocols, you could rest assured that your passwords, invoices, and company intellectual property were safely behind your high-end network and firewalls.

Now that your employees are home, they are taking that sensitive information and working with it, transmitting it, and storing it on their home networks…the same home network that little Timmy’s virus-infected tablet is on…the same WiFi that your employee decided to not password protect because it was easier than having to put the password into every visitor’s phone.

Now is the time to make sure that your company is implementing not only new security standards for their employee’s company devices but implementing proper virus protection for every personal laptop and desktop computer that has found itself in your employees’ homes. Additionally, your employees will probably be reaching out to the company infrastructure via VPNs. These very useful tools can be configured in ways that leave the data being shared wide open for anyone with some technical know-how to view and steal.

Do you have reliable internet or a secondary internet service provider?

For key employees, they must stay connected. With residential internet having additional load placed on it with everyone at working from home, it is a good idea for your business and clients to have these key employees equipped with redundant internet.

Internet redundancy allows for your key employees to switch to another source for internet access if their main home network goes down. For work at home employees, this can look like a hotspot that they can enable in the event their home loses internet connection.

Scalability, Reliability, Security & Protection

Your workforce has changed nearly overnight. We are all adapting to the new paradigm. As you do this, keep in mind, your business will continue to grow. You will want whatever solutions are implemented to be safe, reliable and be able to scale with your business. If you have any questions about VPNs, internet redundancy, or malware protection please contact us.