#remote work security

In the age of digital nomadism and flexible work, remote freelancing has become a popular way to earn a living. But while you’re securing new clients and chasing deadlines, don’t forget to protect your digital workspace. Cybersecurity threats are on the rise, and freelancers are often targeted due to weaker security setups. This article covers essential cybersecurity tips that every freelancer…

Introduction As remote work continues to rise, so does the risk of cyber threats targeting remote employees. Without the protective barriers of an office IT infrastructure, remote workers must take extra precautions to ensure their data and devices remain secure. This guide will walk you through essential cyber hygiene practices to safeguard your digital workspace. The Ultimate Guide to Cyber…

If your employees have to make substantial purchases regularly, it makes sense to hand over financial control with a credit card. For most small businesses, a standard small business line of credit will suffice. But when should you upgrade to something more substantial? Is a corporate card the right way to go for your company? In this blog, we'll help you find out.

How Does a Corporate Credit Card Differ from a Business Card?

First things first, let's go over some misconceptions. While they sound similar, corporate cards are different from small business cards. For the latter, creditors usually issue cards directly to individuals and the company. The business owner is responsible for keeping up with payments.

For a corporate card, the company is liable for the debt. Employees can have personal cards, and corporate card management software can help keep track of expenses. However, no individual is guaranteeing the card.

As a result, it offers more separation between the business owner and the organization. Another critical distinction is availability.

There are many requirements to qualify for a corporate credit card. While exact qualifications vary, most creditors require an audit of corporate finances and annual spending of at least $1 million.

Standard business cards don't come with those strict requirements, making them far easier to get.

Benefits of a Corporate Credit Card

Corporate cards come with a few notable benefits you can't get with standard business card alternatives.

More Control and Transparency

With a corporate line of credit, staying on top of expenses is a breeze. Corporate card management platforms let you see charges, adjust spending controls, and more. It prevents your employees from making personal charges and offers more transparency.

Easier Expense Tracking

Tracking expenses is no easy task when multiple employees have cards. Your accounting department would have to track down receipts, perform reimbursements, and more. That's not the case with corporate cards. Robust software provides all the data you need in one click.

Having a corporate credit card can do a lot to simplify your company's financial matters. Whether you're making small purchases or massive investments, corporate cards give you ultimate control and transparency.

With more companies shifting to the remote work trend, many unique security challenges arise among organizations.

Since employees work from home, they rely on their wi-fi or data connection, which might expose the company’s sensitive data to potential risks. All these threats have a significant impact on the overall working atmosphere and productivity of every firm.

And, to escape from these kinds of hazards, companies must implement worthwhile policies and dynamic plans that guarantee full safety. Apart from this, the selection of the right tools and well-defined training can also prevent security risks to a great extent.

Have a look at some common yet best tips & practices to keep remote work security in place while getting the most out of your remote workforce.

Remote Work Security- Best Practices + Tips

Set Up Effective Data Safety Policies First

Company data is valuable. So, take out time to choose the right candidates for handling those data. Limiting access is also a good option if you don’t want to freak out thinking about how multiple employees have been accessing data.

Internal security breaches can easily take place within a company due to mistakes of employees (though unintentionally), but it’s not a major challenge for managers. In contrast to that, when data goes outside of the firm via any means, this leads to critical circumstances. 

Besides all these, one of the straightforward ways to protect valuable data is drafting clear policies that speak about expectations employees keep from employees (regarding data security) and also the consequences of not complying with those policies.

Use Advanced Tools And Embrace Technology Advancement

Data security is not just about formulating policies, you ought to equip workers with efficient tools that encourage them to remain accommodating. The comprehensive list of tools includes password manager to antivirus software installation. Your remote team ultimately turns out more productive when they get the right tools to work with.

Another advantage that comes with advanced tools is that these boost the working ability of employees by getting rid of unnecessary worries about risk factors. Thus, they can make a better focus on completing the given task on time and with no errors.

Adopt Multi-Factor Authentication

You might don’t know, but multi-factor authentication remains the most effective method to verify the true identity of people. This approach demands a different set of information from users, including security checks, pop-up notifications, contact number identification, biometrics, and many more. The majority of remote working organizations embrace MFA to impede security hazards.

Keep Applications And Programs Fully Updated

Updating applications and programs are bothersome, but it saves devices from malware attacks. Yes, work gets hamper while updating the software since developers have to walk down to a lengthy process, however, its outcome proves to be valuable later.

At the same time, updates freak out employers when the team is working from a remote location. It often leads to miscommunication and technical issues.

Manage Workplaces Of Remote Employees

Fortunately, the current market is loaded with efficient productivity tracking and employee monitoring software that slacks off the heavy burden of organizations.

Not just employers, even employees are now aware of the positive consequences of using monitoring software, such as calculation of overtime pay, work behavior analysis, and many more.

Together, all these contribute to raising productivity, protecting precious data, regulating policies, and other crucial conducts. 

Also, look at- Common Challenges That Comes With Remote Work Security.

Under the circumstances of managing remote employees, employers encounter numerous challenges. Some of them are:-

Security Issues

You have got a bit of sheer luck if your employees are responsible enough to determine and eliminate security threats on time. But, those qualities seem so rare in the current scenario. Consequently, business owners have to be more attentive, which affects their other duties.

More chances of scams

Organizations hire employees with unique skills to recognize and sort out scams. When it comes to regular workers, then things appear to be complicated. In this way, security is exposed to danger.

Conclusion

Due to this work from home culture adopted by many companies, security should be an important part to avoid security issues, so that remote work security can be managed effectively.

According to the fact, 59% of the employees feel safer working from office premises than working from home. And 71% of the employees have a strong belief that work from home has made their systems vulnerable to Cybercriminals.

So, according to this information, let us focus on some of the ways through which IT executives and other employees can adopt to secure remote work security.

1. ADVANCED SECURITY MANAGEMENT:

Malicious attacks of Cyber Criminals on governments, companies, and industries are common. As the risk of a data breach, hacking, and other cybercrime is more in work from home culture, security should be more with additional layers.

So, in the form of two-factor authentication, businesses use it as an extra layer of protection to user accounts. Otherwise, TDE (transparent data encryption) is also used to protect data from cybercriminals.

You can apply it to the safety of your organization. Its guide is available online from Microsoft’s website.

Some of the other techniques are:

Logout user when browsing is complete.

Re-use of Passwords needs to get prevented.

Local area networks should be restricted.  

2. REMOTE WORK DATA POLICY:

During work from home, managers and It executives should manage employees through some data policies which the employees need to follow to ensure no data breach and malicious attacks by cybercriminals.

The policy should include:

Use of IT devices and systems only if it is acceptable.

It should be the duty as well as the responsibility of the employees, to safeguard the confidential information of the organization.

Rules and regulations should be maintained for proper security management.

Risks and records should be managed properly.

The work of each employee should be tracked and reviewed.

Proper training should be given to the employees to maintain security controls.

Policies differ. But it should be appropriate and easy to implement for the employees for better results.

3. EMPLOYEE MONITORING TOOLS:

Monitoring tools can help you track and keep the records of the employee’s every activity starting from their login to their final logout.

The organization not only should adopt these tools but also see who is using them and how well they are performing along with the details of the tools. When it comes to remote work management, monitoring tools are necessary through which you can track your employee’s actions on company-owned applications and tools.

There are many monitoring tools available in the market out there. But the best one is EmpMonitor.

EMPMONITOR:

EmpMonitor is an employee monitoring software that not only tracks each activity of the employee on their working device but also maintains the records of their actions. It acquires all the features which you need to maintain the security balance among your employees.

FEATURES OF EMPMONITOR:

a. Productivity Reports:

EmpMonitor provides detailed reports on the working of the employees during their productive hours.

b.  Real-time Screenshots:

EmpMonitor provides screenshots with high quality. The minimum time interval is 15 seconds. You can adjust it according to your choice.

c. Advanced Access Control:

Access to confidential information is maintained only by the authorized person.

d.  Productivity Analysis & Measurement:

Measure the productivity of the employees, individuals with a detailed report. You can also analyze the most productive day of your organization through EmpMonitor.

e. Web & App Usage Reports:

It tracks the browsing history and applications used by the employees during their paid hours.

f.  Stealth mode:

Works as an invisible software that is neither recognized by the task manager nor present in the program list. It works behind the desk without any interruption to the employees.

g. Detailed Timesheet:

It tracks the time spent by the employees on a particular project.

h. Role-Based Access:

Role-based access control (RBAC) restricts network access based on a person’s role within an organization and has become one of the main methods for advanced access control. The roles in RBAC refer to the levels of access that employees have to the network.

4. INCREASE REMOTE WORK SECURITY WITH DATA ENCRYPTION:

Data encryption is nothing but the process in which confidential information is represented as a code that the authorized person with a security key can understand.

It is one of the best ways to protect your data from cybercrime and other malicious activities.

Free and paid encryption tools are available in the market. Tools like AxCrypt, CryptoExpert, etc. used by the managers to increase remote work security.

5. EMPLOYEE EDUCATION:

To maintain the security management of your company, the first step should be the education of employees regarding security measures and cybercrimes. Employees without training are incomplete. They are incapable of fighting against cyber crimes and engineering attacks. So train them to recognize phishing and cyber-attacks.

6. REMOTE WORK SECURITY WITH IOT:

In IoT(internet of things) devices of the organization are connected with each other. When the data is transferred, it flows over a protected network. The devices are connected with a unique identifier that makes the transfer of data possible over a safe network.

But it has disadvantages like many of them are unknown about its features and management policy which can cause issues if implemented.

7.  KEEP SYSTEMS UPDATED:

System updates reduce loopholes. It should be added to the best practices of the employees where they have to keep their software update to reduce the chance of harmful attacks.

Also, system updation makes your remote employees more productive with more user-experience.

Through this, you can also analyze the work of your employees.

8.  NETWORK SECURITY OF REMOTE WORK:

The Virtual private network is also known as a VPN should be used to transfer data from a geographical distance. But ensure that the access is in authorized hands.

CHECKOUT RELATED ARTICLES:

Remote Workforce Analytics: The Key To Remote Work Productivity WFH Update: How Remote Work Culture Affects Sensitive Sectors

WRAPPING WORDS:

It is necessary to take several actions to keep your data safe. Remote work security is necessary for remote work culture.

So, the above listed are the ways through which you can maintain the security of your data along with some monitoring tools like EmpMonitor to monitor your remote employees during working hours.

Have you decided which tool is best for your organization? Or have you already one with you? If so, what is your experience regarding it? Please share your views. I feel glad to hear from you!