6 Tips for Securing Your Data from Cyber Attacks as a Remote Worker

The remote employees work outside the traditional office. Definitely, you have heard of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). BYOD is in-between the work schedule of a traditional employee of Brick-and-Mortar organization and a remote company. If you work for a company of any sort of appreciable size, you probably know someone or are someone who has done remote work at least once per week. The remote workforce in 2019 is 140% larger than it was 15 years ago. That means a lot more people working in their bathrobes, unshaven, sipping a giant coffee and raiding the fridge while also brokering deals, making sales, impressing clients, and making sure their four-year-old son doesn’t run through the Skype call with the board of directors wearing his Kylo Ren mask. Remote workers face additional security risks compared to traditional workers. This article will discuss preventive ways of security risks.

Why the Hackers are Targeting the Remote Workers

Internet at the end of the 90s gave birth to a new segment of work profile – bloggers and affiliate marketers. Sooner, human realized that working from home has several benefits. Working remotely offers tremendous benefits to a person’s work/life balance: Fewer miles to commute every month, less money spent on fuel and going out to lunch, more time with family and more time to do things around the house
For the company, it is a positive for morale and can even allow it to “double-up” on workers for specific busy times of the year: When you’re at home working remotely, a contract worker can be at your workstation in the office doing additional tasks. Nokia with some models of smartphones started to broaden the scope of the internet. Presently, Android on smartphones literary changed the world. Scope of IT works and marketing is increasing. Not all the countries on this earth have a peaceful environment to run a physical business and manage the employees. Unfortunately, crime in the real world is sharply increasing. Citizens in the major English speaking countries such as the US, UK, India, New Zealand, Australia neither living in peace nor all have stable jobs.

There are advantages and disadvantages to remote work but there is a high probability that remote is the future. Unfortunately, still, a few services for the corporate are not available in cloud computing “pay-as-you-go” model. Compared to a BYOD employee, a Remote Worker may be less trained with less chance of top-up training. Among the downsides of working remotely, you don’t get the same camaraderie and closeness that you have when you work in the office, which can lead to you feeling disjointed from the rest of the team.

Data Breaches and Cyber-Attacks in the Remote Work Field

The possibility of data breaches and cyber-attacks occurring while you are working remotely is a reality. Most big companies are likely to have several layers of security in place on their hard-wired networks. Security audit and firewalls can keep out most attacks from the main server, but what about the person using their wireless to log on remotely? It’s a fact that there is a cybersecurity event being perpetrated on an Internet-of-Things device every 39 seconds. And it gets even worse when you are talking about small-to-medium businesses, which will see a staggering number of attacks by the end of 2019: one every 14 seconds, which translates to four every minute, 240 every hour, and 576 in just a single day.

Remote work opens up the ability to travel and take the job carrying with the person. That does open up a few extra risks which once was exclusive only to the employees at top management posts. A laptop and a D segment sedan was the typical photographic depiction of a CEO of the 90s. It is good that the progress of internet-based jobs is decreasing the economical gap among the different social classes.

Best Practices for Remote Workers

How do you fight data breaches and cyberattacks when you’re working remotely? These six tips will make it easier to navigate the path from your kitchen table to your office and back again.

1. Use a password manager for your logins: It can be very tough to remember all your user IDs and passwords, especially when you aren’t on your work computer. A password manager will store everything safely for you in a vault while all you have to do is remember one master password.
2. Install quality anti-spyware/malware software : Spyware can record your every keystroke, thus stealing all your IDs, passwords, and anything else sensitive on your company server.
3. Avoid Public Wi-Fi at all costs: It’s great fun to sit at a coffee shop or a bookstore and enjoy the silence while you work. But public Wi-Fi is a catastrophe when it comes to keeping your data safe. It’s the equivalent of opening your front door and yelling out where you are hiding the key and where all the valuables are stored.
4. Use a VPN : Virtual Private Networks are low-cost and are the closest thing to a sure thing for privacy. Use them from your home or working remotely to protect any data you are moving to.
5. Two-Factor Authentication: With the right software a hacker might break your password, but the second factor – a code sent to your phone or a certain keyword make it almost completely impossible to break into your system.
6. Back up your work: When cybercriminals attempt to ransom your files or simply erase them, your backup files are the great equalizer. Even if the ransomware destroys your files or infects them, you have a backup to rely on at all times.

Many companies around this segment shares useful remote work tips which may be useful for the interested readers.

Conclusion

There are a variety of ways in which people can work remotely. Freelances and entrepreneurs may use part of the house or rent out an office space for their small staff. However, some of the gaps remaining opened which is bridging the gap of physical distance – the internet. Often the remote workers unaware that the internet is their tool of trade which needs some time to think about making secured – they think to make the actual work quality better. It must be noted that certain states may already have governmental guidelines for the remote workers and more regulation may be implemented in future.