Tips to Protect Your Business Data When the Employee is Working at Home

With many forced into seclusion over the past months, we have seen an inevitable flood in 'Working From Home' (WFH). While there have been many crucial similitudes we have seen many various situations and solutions implemented depending on the technologies set up. Every one of them has a few situations which might be a worry to business proprietors and ranking directors – and they are things that we all ought to know about, so we can protect against them.

1) Part Server/Part Cloud Businesses

For many businesses, the total progress to 'the cloud' has not yet been conceivable – principally because of a business basic application required by the employee which isn't yet accessible or upgraded for a 'cloud-empowered' arrangement. These have would in general be a database system, or a CRM, or the business accounts software – which are still Server based, and accessed by employees when they are in the office. 

Normally the favored answer for this has been a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection for the home Server (which builds up a secure 'burrow' to the office network) – combined with a Remote Desktop connection to gain access to their office PC. 

In the main, this is a secure arrangement. The VPN guarantees an encrypted connection, and the reality they are working on their office PC implies no data is being transferred and stored off-site (on their home PC/laptop). 

In request to increase security, it is often prescribed for employees to utilize a company-possessed PC or laptop when connecting to the office network by means of a VPN. The explanation behind this is on the grounds that business machines are as a rule 'locked-down' and managed, making them less helpless against attacks from hackers and less inclined to open business data to other people, eg, other individuals from the family who may utilize the home computer! 

We do realize anyway that it's not generally conceivable to utilize a business machine and if so, we would suggest taking the following precautionary measures with a home PC setup :

• Try not to utilize a pc that is running windows 7 (or before) (windows 7 is not, at this point supported by Microsoft and is an objective for hackers, putting your business data at risk) 
• On the off chance that you are saving your documents to your pc ensure you take customary backups 
• Ensure windows security updates are right up-to-date (these are delivered on a month to month premise and help 'plug' any security openings that hackers hope to exploit within the system) 
• Ensure you install advanced cloud antivirus and it is stayed up with the latest (by keeping your antivirus up-to-date it will be able to detect the most recently released threats) 
• On the off chance that you can, uninstall any applications that you do not utilize anymore or are old (applications – especially old ones – can be focused by hackers) 
• Make another user account that isn't an administrator account with the goal that lone you use it for work purposes (this helps keep things, eg, documents and VPN connections, separate from your main user account that other relatives may utilize) 
• On the off chance that you are sharing your home pc with others ensure you log out of any websites you have been using for work and don't spare any passwords (certainly before any other individual uses this pc/laptop) 
• Audit the cloud services that you use in your business, eg, office 365, and if conceivable empower two-factor authentication (your it support provider might have the option to assist you with this)

A Major proposal (and one which identifies with a wide range of situation) – be very mindful of emails containing clickable links… you should just click on those which you confide in 100% – the world is seeing an immense increase in Phishing emails – with hackers trying to exploit these tempestuous times. If all else fails Don't Click! 

Other solutions to access the essential applications from home is for the employee to utilize a Remote Control software (TeamViewer or LogMeIn are popular models). 

The main advantage of the remote control software is that they are regularly moderately easy to set up and don't involve any convoluted design work to be completed. They likewise provide an experience that your employee know about, ie, as though they are sitting at their PC in the office. 

One of the drawbacks anyway is that they can be costly to purchase, or must be purchased as a major aspect of a subscription service, especially a portion of the more well-known brands. 

2) Full Cloud Businesses 

The progress to home working for employees at businesses who have changed to the cloud fully over late years has definitely been a simpler one. These will in general be businesses that have cloud solutions for the entirety of their business applications. For example, a business may have their email on Office 365 – may have all their files and folders in Sharepoint (part of Office 365) – have their accounts in a cloud-based solution like Xero or Sage Online – have a cloud-based CRM (such as Microsoft Dynamics / Pipedrive / Zoho, etc) – and also have an internet based phone system.

For these, the progress is moderately painless – they can unplug their telephones from the office, and plug-in at home – and as long as they have a better than average internet connection at home, they have full access to the entirety of their applications to have the option to work adequately. 

In spite of the fact that there is no VPN or connection to the office Server involved with cloud-based systems we despite everything should be cautious with regards to securing our data. The entirety of the proposals when working from home using a VPN above still apply, ie, utilize a company-possessed laptop if conceivable and ensure everything is up-to-date. 

One of the most important things on the rundown that you can implement for cloud services is Two Factor authentication. Because of the importance of securing your business data – which is no longer stored on your internal Server however is stored on internet-based Servers (the cloud) – most cloud services presently offer this feature worked into their solutions. When implemented this will increase your business' data security by an enormous sum, while as yet being anything but difficult to utilize (normally a code is sent to your mobile telephone to access your data). 

Therefore, it is more than advantageous to survey every one of your cloud services and empower this feature so your business data remains secure. 

Some cloud services likewise offer additional approaches to secure access to your data. One helpful feature is called IP address locking which permits just certain IP addresses to access the service. This is an exceptionally viable method of securing access to your data and can be utilized in tandem with Two Factor authentication.