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Many companies insist that their staff work from home to curb the spread of COVID-19. When working from home, it is essential to ensure that you have checked your cybersecurity.
When working from home, employees access confidential and sensitive information. However, without an IT department which is the first line of defense, it becomes a major security issue. When employees work from home, they use the same machine to access other sites on the internet that are not secure. On the other hand, most home computer systems have already been infected by viruses and malware.
When working from home, you need to consider these five tips to ensure that you are secure.
Table of Contents
Use a Virtual Private Network
When working from home, you need to ensure that you use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). When you use a VPN, you connect anonymously to another computer or network over the internet. VPNs are secure, and they protect your browsing data from the potential breach from hackers.
It is advisable to use a company VPN instead of selecting any VPN that you get online. Using a VPN ensures that the data you transmit is protected from your home computer to the destination’s firewall.
Use the company computer
You have been set up with a VPN, but you decide to use it on your personal computer; this creates a major risk. If the home computer has malicious codes, these codes will jump into the work network and infect other machines on the network.
Check where you store your data
When you are working from home, and you need to work on your home machine or offline. When working offline or on your home machine, you will have to download the data to a local storage device.
Local storage devices or storing the data on the home machine is not advisable, in that malicious codes could have already infected the devices and the machine.
Take care of what you download
Pressure on the impact of COVID-19 is mounting; this has given hackers a perfect way to get the attention of people worldwide. When working from home and seeing an email with a subject like “COVID-19 vaccine, “many people will automatically open the email.
The emails sent by hackers have malicious codes that will automatically infect your system and send the data to the hackers or give them remote access to your machine. When you have received an email from a colleague and notice that they are not using their official work email, do not reply.
Hackers will often use familiar business names to lure you into opening the email. Most people will not scrutinize the email address if they see the sender’s name belongs to someone they know.
Use company applications
When working from home, you need to ensure that you use the provided company applications that run on the companies systems. The company systems can handle all the processes that are needed for the applications to run from home.
Another best option is to ensure that your organization has remote desktop protocols. When you use a remote desktop, the virtual machine is secured behind the companies IT security. You need to ensure that you avoid working in wifi hotspots and cyber cafes.
Final thoughts
Computer security is one of the important things you need to consider when working from home. Hackers who have had difficulty breaking your company network for information will easily get what they need from your home computer.
The reason that will make the hackers target you when working from home is that you cannot secure your home network.
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