Security Risks you Should be Aware of when Remote Working

Remote working is a relatively new idea. Now that the Coronavirus has struck, many people are being forced into this new way of thinking, a new reality. The digital age is well and truly upon us (whether we like it or not) which means, as with anything, there can be a large amount of risk involved. AAG are on hand to provide you with the knowledge and support that you may need during this difficult time.

Now is the time to make sure you’re secure

With the government ordering that everybody who can work from home should, it caused many businesses to rush the processes behind remote working. For example, making sure that every employee has sufficient home Wi-Fi and that you have enough VPN licenses for every employee.

Now that every business that can work from home is doing so, take this opportunity to go back and ensure that you have the correct security solutions in place. Amend your business continuity plan to include scenarios such as the one we are experiencing right now. It is this type of planning that separate the strong businesses from the weak.

Using your own hardware

Using home devices can present a number of threats. It’s important that you are aware of these. Email accounts are an obvious threat. For example, if you signed into your Gmail account and clicked on a phishing email, it wouldn’t be your account that has a virus, it would be your piece of equipment. If that device then gets connected to your corporate data, with no security procedures in place, that data is very much at risk.

This could be quite common for shared home devices. The more people that are using a device on a daily basis, the more at risk you are to vulnerabilities.

An influx of security breaches

Everybody has been affected by COVID-19 in one form or another. Because of businesses vulnerability during this time, a number of cyber-criminals have taken the Coronavirus as an opportunity. Statistics relating to cyber crime demonstrate a spike in phishing emails, pretending to come from organisations such as Microsoft (what most businesses are now using to communicate with customers, partners, colleagues, etc) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

It’s important, now more than ever, that everybody knows the signs of a phishing email:

• Bad/fractured grammar.
• Offering something for free.
• Claim there’s a problem with your account.
• Asking to confirm some personal information

See an example of this below

Office 365 Licensing

Something that isn’t commonly known about Office 365 licenses are that you can have up to 5 devices signed into your account at any given moment. This is convenient for a number of reasons. One example of this is if you need to reply to a chat on Microsoft Teams but you have shut down your PC. Rather than logging back in, sign into Teams on your mobile. You are also able to answer calls on Teams, both audio and video. Your account is synchronised so will update on every device if you make a change.