Tips To Maintain Data Security When Employees Work Remotely

By Author: Jennifer Lewis
Total Articles: 304
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The concept of working remotely is growing significantly by the courtesy of rising tele-commuting concept. This concept is getting swift momentum and has become a very important feature of many companies as they allow their employees to work from wherever they want. The employees are provided with a set-up to login to the company's server from wherever they are and access the data. Irrespective of increasing productivity and other manifold benefits, this concept opens up company's data to numerous risks and security issues and malware infiltration is the biggest on the list. This problem is seen arising very often in many companies as the devices used by remote employees are not as secure as they should be. They lack proper firewalls, updated anti-virus systems and data encryption systems. The case of smart phones and tablets is even worse when it comes to security, as most users stay reluctant from installing anti-virus in their smart devices. People looking to breach the security and get access to a company's data can easily pass-on Trojans through such insecure systems and devices. Once this malware is in the server, it can ...
... open a port to its command, control the server and drain entire data. There is every chance that this malware could tamper with the permissions and gain total control over the company's server. So what is the solution to this problem?

One solution is to implement a very stringent policy that gives a clear-cut instruction on what devices to use, when to use, system requirements before connecting to company's server, the anti-virus to be used and all other significant as well as insignificant issues for people working remotely. However, we all know that even the best anti-virus software fail, during major intrusion occurring and in this case, there are many other security steps that could be taken. The best option is to educate remote employees about usage of device to prevent it from malware infiltration. Here are a few points that a business owner should educate his remote employees about.

1 – Get all the updates coming from OS, programs and antivirus systems as soon as they are released

2 – Employees should stay at a safe distance from every irrelevant and unsolicited links or referrals. They should not click them as just by a click, they allow them to transfer infected and malicious files to your device.

3 - Employees should use strong passwords and two-way authentication system and business owners should teach their employees on how to create strong passwords.

Remote workers often use laptops, smart phones, tables, USB drives, memory cards, CDs and these devices are more prone to be stolen. The best way to secure the data present in the stolen device is to install whole-disk encryption software. The encrypted data is of no use for the thief, unless he knows how to decode the encryption language.

Another option is to integrate the remote device with the main server in such a way that if it is stolen, the IT admin can erase all the data from that device in a matter of minutes.

Conclusion

Apart from these above-mentioned threats, network is also a big threat but as mentioned above, there is a remedy to every data security related issue. Another very important step, business owners could take is to restrict access to the data on "know the need" basis.

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