5 Work From Home Security Mistakes Threatening Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

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Word From Home During Covid 19

Many businesses have moved to a work-from-home policy due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and while the move to work-at-home employees may go without a hitch, there’s still the worry of security.

You can’t expect every employee to be up-to-date with the latest security prevention measures, which is why it’s up to you and your IT team to make sure everyone takes the correct preventive security measures while working.

In this article, I’ll be outlining the security mistakes that haunt many businesses right now, and how you can prevent your business from making the same mistakes.

Work From Home

01. Not Educating Employees on Security

The number one security mistake businesses make is not educating their employees on online security.

You see it all the time, with businesses suffering massive security breaches because an employee didn’t realize that clicking ad runs the risk of downloading malware to their computer.

Since you won’t be there to monitor your employees, it’s vital to educate your employees on how to keep themselves and their work safe. If you don’t, who knows what they might do.

Plus, you never know the state of someone’s network security until you see it for yourself.

02. Using Unencrypted Wi-Fi

Not everyone knows the dangers of using unencrypted Wi-Fi, meaning that, if your business has implemented a work-at-home policy, your employees run the risk of leaking their work to the Internet and to any cybercriminal that intercepts their network data.

Fortunately, there exist ways to encrypt their network and the data traveling to-and-from their devices, the most popular solution being virtual private networks or VPNs for short.

VPNs encrypt data, making sure no one is able to intercept or steal said data.

One of the best ways to implement a VPN is to use a VPN router. And for the smaller businesses, don’t worry—there are cheap VPN routers out there. Price is not an issue.

03. Never Enforcing Strong Passwords

Passwords are the backbone of security. Without strong passwords, users find themselves losing access to their accounts because a hacker stole their weak password and gained access.

Businesses would do well to encourage the use of strong passwords. Not only that, but businesses should also encourage the changing of passwords on a regular basis.

In fact, admins are able to enforce password changes every so often, meaning there’s no reason to not have users create strong passwords on a frequent basis.

This is especially important during a work-from-home situation, so don’t ignore this advice.

04. Not Updating Their Security Infrastructure

In regular conditions, your security infrastructure is responsible for one, controlled environment. When working from home, however, it’s now responsible for users spread around the state.

To avoid any security mishaps, be sure to upgrade your servers and any other security infrastructure. You should be keeping your servers updated period, but it wouldn’t hurt to install any additional security updates.

Do whatever we can to avoid security risks, right?

05. Not Taking Advantage of Cloud-Based Software

IF your business requires the use of critical, confidential data to function, then you may want to look into using cloud-based storage.

Of course, you should only use cloud storage services that are provided by reputable providers (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.).

Local data is fine, but you aren’t always able to trust people to handle local data with the respect and care it deserves, so it’s better to take advantage of the cloud storage services available.

Conclusion

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has forced many small businesses to implement work-from-home policies, and if your business is experiencing the same thing, it’s important to ensure proper security protocols are in place.

Don’t make the same mistakes I’ve listed here; many businesses have fallen to simple security mistakes that could’ve been easily avoided. Don’t become part of the statistic!

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