During this pandemic, many businesses have been caught off guard by the scope of the issue. Many have approached us about ways to allow work from home options for all employees. Keeping your business operational while trying to maintain some security are the two factors that need to be balanced during this.
The ability to work remotely varies greatly depending on the resources and technology available in your company. Some security may have to be sacrificed temporarily and it’s important to ensure employees are aware of any new operating procedures during this period. The security of the data you have is paramount, and any remote access should try to reduce the risk to that data. We recommend keeping the following factors in mind:
- Executives need to be briefed on the risk to the organization and data during this period.
- This is temporary until a more permanent solution can be implemented through more formal Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning (DR/BCP).
- Policies and procedures should be created/updated to ensure data is being handled properly by remote workers.
- Remote access should restrict transfers of data out of your environment to unprotected devices.
- Remote access should prevent transfers of malicious data into your environment
- Bring your own device (BYOD), while very tempting, is very risky and needs to be introduced sparingly and as a last resort after exhausting other options.
M.A. Polce can help you through this process and we are working with vendors like Cisco to offer temporary solutions for business collaboration.
