While there are many pluses to working from home — reducing air pollution, minimizing your risk of viruses, and eliminating rush hour wield time driving to and from the office–there are a whole lot of concerns that most likely are being overlooked. Cybersecurity is a growing concern for small and large businesses that employ a remote workforce and a work-from-home team.
Cybersecurity, A Top Priority
Managed Service Providers (MSP) are delivering a consistent message, keep cybersecurity a top priority. While many employees are more likely to be the target of “phishing” campaigns while working out of the office, phishing attempts to steal personal information no matter an employee’s location.
Preparing NOT To Fall Victim To A Cyberattack
- Train your employees on phishing attacks, and make sure that you comply with your industry’s cybersecurity regulations, ie. GDPR, CCPA, CCMC, HIPAA
- Ensure you are only accessing your work environment securely and using your work computer for business (this includes not sharing your computer with your children at home with online learning).
- Set controls to restrict the movement of call recordings when on video calls.
- Also, with video calls, limit file sharing in chat to keep sensitive data safe.
- Reset your passwords on your home and business computers, phones, or IoT devices to be unique and challenging to crack, using complex passwords that are at least 12 characters long. — Never keep a default password on your devices.
- Social media pages should not be open at the same time as sensitive company data.
- While working, if you ever think you’ve clicked on something malicious, contact your IT or supervisor as soon as possible.
- Contact your MSP to step up security monitoring of both devices and users to enable your team to proactively identify and correct mistakes made by users in managing sensitive data. Some MSPs have a breach hotline available to their customers.
- Again, talk with your MSP, and choose a paid antivirus software robust enough to eliminate viruses, trojans, ransomware, adware, and spyware. Your computer isn’t the only potential target — don’t forget about protecting your phone and tablet too.
- Work with your insurance agent to ensure that your cyber liability coverage is comprehensive to protect your entire business.
It’s essential to stay safe as cybercriminals are doing whatever they can to take advantage of these difficult times. This statistic is startling — Mega data breaches, which involve more than one million records, now cost an average of $50 million, up 20% compared to 2019. You can read more about the uptick in cyber scams and the cost associated with cybercrime at BusinessInsurance.com
At FifthWall Solutions, our Dedicated Cyber Producers help agents and their customers navigate the best practices of cybersecurity. If you would like a free, no-obligation assessment of your business’s cyber risk posture, contact us today.