With COVID-19 shutting down offices globally and reassigning most workers to accessing sensitive data remotely, it’s never been more important to maintain secure remote connections. As offices continue to operate as usual, and office workers resort to working from home or cafes, it’s important to keep in mind that good cybersecurity practices are fundamental to preventing cybersecurity attacks and data leaks.
What is secure remote access?
As businesses become even more technologically advanced and much of their data is stored in cloud-based services, it becomes increasingly important to prevent data breaches. Within an office environment, this is less of a concern as internal measures and IT security measures are typically enough to prevent any attack.
However, when businesses go online for whatever reason, there needs to be similarly structured measures in place to prevent data breaches. As employees might transition to using personal devices and accessing sensitive information from public wifi spots, the risk of a data breach becomes exponentially higher: no matter how careful your employees are, accessing information from personal devices is an inherently risky move. Software that is accessible on personal computers might be less likely to be patched against security threats in the same way that an office-owned computer and network would be.
Having secure remote access means that there are the same stringent security measures in place even when working remotely to prevent the risk that your business is targeted and sensitive information is exposed.
Companies that specialise in cybersecurity can definitely help you create a secure remote working environment, and it is an essential to invest in if much of your business is conducted online.
Why is secure remote access important?
Secure remote access is important for any business that deals with client information, no matter how sensitive, and this is especially poignant now that many businesses have switched to remote working. In the last year, cybersecurity threats against businesses were up by 13%; furthermore, up to 63% of companies had a potential data breach within the last twelve months, making it all the more important to ensure that any business conducted online is protected from the risk of outside threats. Besides opening up the company to lawsuit, a data breach of client information could lead to a loss of revenue and can spell the end for many small businesses who are just starting to turn a profit, as clients will be disinclined to use their services again if their information was compromised.
In addition, a business with a history of vulnerability will be prone to further attacks even after the vulnerability has been addressed, which will increase the cost of protecting your business from external threats.
How can you improve your secure remote access?
The best thing you can do for your business is invest in a cybersecurity firm that will monitor your business for you. As cybersecurity threats grow even more advanced and risks become even harder to detect, the easiest way to ensure your business is safe for both you and your client is to invest in a company like AIRO software to monitor and patch vulnerabilities as they occur in real time. There are other measures you can take, but for 100% safety and peace of mind, there’s nothing like letting someone else do the heavy lifting for you.
Other measures you can take include:
- Accept that threats to your business are just a matter of time – there is no way to monitor all the risks present in remote access without a dedicated IT team ready to keep track.
- Create a remote working policy that clarifies what measures need to be taken – for example, should employees download data to their personal devices? Are personal devices to be used when working remotely? These guidelines can help limit the scope of an attack.
- When in doubt, encrypt all your information – even if a breach does happen, sensitive data won’t be usable. This can occur in a number of ways, but the most common one is using a VPN.
- Make your employees utilise multifactor authentication. This won’t prevent a breach on its own, but it’ll make it harder for one to happen.
- Be careful of how you manage sensitive data. What data can be downloaded? What data should absolutely only be accessed in the office? These are guidelines which will help clarify what should absolutely not be accessible to the general public.
Conclusion
Every day, new and emerging businesses face complicated threats that might be difficult to detect unless you know what you’re looking for, and once a business becomes vulnerable to cyber threats, it’s difficult to maintain both the trust of its clientele and the security of the business itself. Ideally, the best cure for this is prevention, making sure that a threat or a hack never happens in the first place – however to ensure that this risk is completely mitigated, asking for outside help is always best.
Cybersecurity firms and IT firms are trained to recognise sophisticated attacks that the average user might not see as a threat. As they focus solely on a singular aspect of a business, companies that focus on IT are experts in the field of maintaining business security even in the face of an insurmountable risk such as remote working.
At AIRO Software, we have years of experience in working remotely and staying up to date with the most sophisticated malware, phishing, and hacking attacks that emerge from the internet, and we’re ready to help you create a secure working environment for your team so that they can work from anywhere, without risking your business safety.
If you need assistance in improving your company’s cybersecurity systems, get in touch by filling in the form below.
