Tips to protect company data when we telecommute

Companies in the last three years have had to face very important challenges. The transition to the digital world implies a greater use of the cloud to which more and more companies are migrating. This has also involved changes in the way of working where remote work is a common practice today. Thus, a new concept of hybrid work is being widely used, which consists of giving employees flexibility and autonomy so that employees can work from home, the office or anywhere in the world. That does not mean that, for example, if they work from home, they take the appropriate security measures. In this article we are going to give some tips to protect company data when we telecommute.

Tips to protect company data when we telecommute

Hybrid working is here to stay and the danger of sensitive company data being leaked is a growing concern now that many of us are working remotely from home. In that regard, the home Wi-Fi networks in our homes are not equipped with enterprise-grade security features capable of preventing certain types of attacks. For this reason, if you work from home you should protect your data in the best possible way with these tips.

The router and secure home Wi-Fi networks

At the time of work we are going to connect by network cable or Wi-Fi according to the needs of each one. What determines security in both cases is that the router is not obsolete. That means that we have to check by entering the router configuration that it has a relatively recent firmware. If it has not been updated for several years because there is none available, that means that it must be replaced.

Frontal del router AVM FRITZ!Box 7530 en detalle, con los LEDs y botones físicos

On the other hand, we must have a Wi-Fi network with a strong password and adequate encryption. At least today it is recommended that it be WPA2 but if it supports WPA2+WPA3 this would be the best option. You may be interested in knowing how to configure your home network for teleworking.

Password policy and 2FA authentication

The first thing we have to do is adopt a good practice such as the use of strong passwords . This happens because when we create ours they have a minimum length of 12 characters, uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special symbols. With this to start it may be enough but also you do not have to reuse passwords . The password must be unique for each place because if it is leaked or stolen, the rest of the accounts that use it may be in danger.

We must also think about enabling 2FA authentication for our accounts . So even if they get our password they will not be able to log in because they are missing a second step.

On the other hand, we must be careful how we store our passwords to protect our company data. It is not convenient to write them down on paper or in a plain text file. For that we can use a password manager like Passwarden or Password Manager Lite. The latter, in addition to storing passwords, allows us to create secure passwords.

The VPN and the use of email

Another important element to protect our company’s data while we telecommute are VPNs . In this case, its most valued aspect would be the security that we achieve, although it also provides privacy. Thus, we get our data to travel protected by a tunnel thanks to encryption. Also preferably it would be better to use a paid VPN. With the free ones we have risks that our information is leaked. Some examples of quality VPNs that we could use would be NordVPN, PureVPN, CyberGhost, and Surfshark. In this way we manage to keep the information safe from cybercriminals, from our ISP and more.

On the other hand, we must be very careful with the way we use email. Here it is very important not to open attachments from unknown sources . In this case, it could contain some type of malware if we run it.

You also have to be very careful with the links contained in the e-mail . For example, they could be Phishing attacks impersonating a company with the aim of stealing our account credentials.

Good software management

In this regard, you must have a good software update policy . The first thing we have to do is have the latest operating system updates installed. It would also be interesting to keep our programs updated, among them we must pay special attention to our VPN client.

Finally, we need to have good security software to protect the data of our organization. In this aspect we must have a good antivirus and, if possible, also have an antimalware program.