Working From Home? You Are The Weakest Link.

If you were the last to leave your office on a Friday night you wouldn’t leave the windows and the doors wide open. Locking your physical workplace when you leave is just common sense.

Businesses have embraced this ‘common sense’ for digital access as well. Locking down your internal network, ensuring that only those with authority can access your company data. Your computers are encrypted, your routers are configured, nobody can access your systems unless you unlock them, in much the same way that you physically lock your premises.

And then we all left the office.

We had lockdown.

We went home.

Work didn’t stop – at least it didn’t for a large swathe of companies. Workers needed to swap their desks for their kitchen tables. They were no longer using the office router and internet; they were using their own routers and internet; and then logging into the workplace network.

This made the cyber criminals very happy. Rubbing their hands with glee as they recognised that in the rush to keep productivity flowing, people were cutting security measures that were previously vigorous within the confines of the office walls.

More often than not remote workers are using unpatched small office/home office (SOHO) routers, leaving them open to flaws easily exploited by the criminal gangs. In effect, they are ‘going’ into the office and leaving the door wide open. In the hurry to get everyone working from home, businesses forgot that the security measures they may have in the office could now easily be breached by their employees working from home.

Whilst lockdown may be a distant memory, work from home has become more prevalent. But securing network access for remote employees has not caught up.

If you have people working onsite, from home, from anywhere other than your physical workplace, they could be the weakest link in your cyber security procedures. Whilst routers remain a prime target, so too are unsecured WiFi points and unencrypted laptops.

Your business cyber security measures do not stop at the doors of your office – your common sense ensures your lock your door at night – but as we take so much of the ‘office’ outside of the doors, you also need to ensure that those locks are on your entire network, wherever your employees are.

If you would like help ensuring that all your employees are working within cyber essentials guidelines, be that onsite, at home or within the office, please get in touch.