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Over the past few months, organizations have put a massive amount of effort into securing their networks, but one simple fact remains the same – Employees are still the first to face cyberattacks, and it is, therefore, crucial that they are adequately protected wherever they work. With this in mind, here are some cybersecurity tips for those who are looking to secure their remote workforce.
Invest in Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Cybersecurity isn’t something that can be learned once and then forgotten – criminals are always looking for new ways to circumvent existing security controls and psychology to gain access to sensitive information. Make sure to invest in proper security awareness training so that staff are aware of the latest threat actors and malware. Some items they should be able to recognize include:
- Phishing attacks, including spear phishing and whaling attacks
- Malicious email attachments
- Domain hijacking and typo-squatter attacks
- Use only well-established SaaS applications
- Avoid installing browser plugins that come from unknown or unidentified developers
Keep your Operating System Up to Date
Even on supported operating systems, there can be significant delays between the disclosure of a vulnerability and its mitigation. Running on outdated versions of an OS opens you up to zero-day exploits, which can result in hundreds of thousands of infections. Ensuring all devices are updated will help minimize this risk.
Separate Work and Personal Devices
Although often easier said than done, it is important to have a distinction between work life and home life, especially if working from home. Keeping your devices separate will reduce the amount of sensitive data exposed if either one becomes compromised.
Monitor Your Third-Party Vendors and Service Providers
Risk management should extend beyond your organization because the weakest link might actually be an outsourced provider or vendor. For this reason, continued investment in vendor risk management and third-party risk management frameworks is very important. The best way to do this is through security ratings. These are data-driven, objective and dynamic measurements of an organization’s security posture and are created by trusted, independent security rating platforms. They provide tremendous value as an objective indicator of an organization’s cybersecurity performance.
Use Access Control
Implementing an adequate access control policy can reduce the risk of data breaches and data leaks involved in privilege escalation attacks. Make sure to follow the principle of least privilege when granting user permissions to employees.
Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is an authentication method where access is granted only after an additional token of verification is provided. This dramatically reduces the risk of successful phishing emails and malware infections because a single password is useless. They would need to access to whatever is generating your one-time code, which should be an authenticator app or security key.
Invest in a Secure Web Gateway
VPNs are insecure, slow, and inefficient – Secure Web Gateways, in contrast, provide a much better user experience and are the modern approach to secure work from anywhere. Stratejm has partnered with Zscaler to provide a 100% cloud-delivered security stack as a service providing always-on protection across all users – mobile, branch, and HQ.
