Following the pandemic, many businesses moved online with digital workspaces. With employees having company accounts and data access in their homes, a new breed of cybersecurity risk was born. Suddenly, corporate and personal data were intrinsically linked, and the safety of both needed a great degree of precision.
Even for those who have managed to re-establish in their office, hybrid work is more popular than ever. Therefore, this piece offers a brief overview of what to consider when installing cybersecurity, how to go about it on both the hardware and software sides and explains how to consolidate those problems into one unified solution.
Consolidating the Issues
While each problem has its own solution, the best approach will be one that covers each weakness in one fell swoop. Working with a partner like SonicWall Online ensures you have access to secure servers for data, have firewalls in place for your email accounts and your wired network, and even inspection tools to detect and remove encrypted cyber-security risks on the fly.
The Hardware Side
Portable Storage
As mentioned above, it’s likely that in a business’s current set-up there are pieces of data that need reconsolidating in the office. Just like rules about taking floppy disks in and out of workplaces from decades and decades ago, the moving of physical data storage is a key way to refine your cybersecurity.
The data on even a simple USB stick can pose a huge corporate and personal cybersecurity risk as demonstrated just this year. To that end, get your hardware and physical storage solution right. Either ensure all data is server-based and accessible to those who need it, or provide the hardware as a package i.e., a work PC rather than storage to attach to a personal PC.
Your LAN
Your workplace LAN (Local Area Network) is the wired connection used to keep your work network running and coherent without always needing access to the cloud or wider internet. While this hardware is all local, it is still susceptible to wireless and mobile threats that can intercept the network at a port. Monitoring hardware is vital for avoiding this, as well as having software to pick up the times something new does connect.
The Software Side
App Permissions
Once your systems are all set up and the hardware is secured, you then have the task of installing required programs, keeping the systems connected to your work networks and the internet, and more. Simple permission changes on work PCs can limit app installations and push a security notification to the IT team whenever a new program is installed. Restricting your workers from using apps and programs that help them is counter-productive, but being made aware of what software exists in your system is vital.
Email/Account Security
One set of apps that your work computers are guaranteed to need are email apps. This is why email cyber-attacks are common. By accessing your digital workspace through a fraudulent email, or even by using mobile devices and networks to mask their appearance as a worker, criminals can gain some influence over your entire work network.
Just like the hardware side of your wired network, the software side needs to be reinforced against the same sorts of threats as work emails and accounts.
