3 Effective Practices for Remote Work Cybersecurity

If your organization was behind the curve in moving to a remote workforce before March of 2020, it likely moved at warp speed to catch up when the coronavirus pandemic essentially shut down traditional offices and moved employees en masse to their home offices.

COVID-19 has proven to be a top driver of digital transformation for organizations across the globe. But with such a swift transition, were your remote work cybersecurity plans able to keep up?

Even prior to the unusual circumstances of 2020, year after year, there has been more for IT departments to manage and it can be overwhelming with cyber risk management.

The most prepared organizations had put best threat assessment practices in place to filter out the exceptions and determine what’s bubbling up to the top, particularly with the remote workers. Effective cyber security programs do the following:

Assess Risk: Conduct, and respond to, regular risk assessments that look both at how data is stored and how data is accessed. This is best done with a comprehensive, automated cyber security management platform, like FortifyData.

Test Regularly: Test security patches as extensively as possible without disrupting corporate workflow. 

Embrace Training: A staff that is knowledgeable about cyber security may be the best defense against potential attacks and threats. 

Another important factor to consider is that while your employees are working remotely, odds are that the employees of any third parties your organization interacts with are as well. This serves as an added level of remote work cybersecurity risk to your business.

Having a third party risk management program in place is essential to keeping your organization safe. The key to making this program successful is having an automated platform that accurately rates the security of your third parties by:

  • Basing cyber risk ratings on the triangulation of external, internal and questionnaire-based assessments.
  • Continuously monitoring cyber threats.
  • Multi-dimensional refinement of the in-scope assets to be included in an assessment.
  • Validating compliance responses for PCI, ISO, SOC2, etc.
  • Integrating communication and task management for remediation

 

In closing, the rapid shift to a remote work environment introduced new risks to an IT department that was possibly overwhelmed to start. But, to ensure your organization doesn’t fall victim to the increased threats, you must prioritize a transformation in your digital strategy that not only has the proper resources and tools to assess and mitigate the cyber risk of your own company and employees, but that of the third parties you work with as well.

To learn more about how to protect your business from cyber risk, contact FortifyData today.

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