Check out this week’s guest blog post from Nicol Pasuit of TechStak for 10 Cybersecurity tips when working from home!
While remote work has been steadily increasing over the past years, entire workforces are now performing their regular duties from the kitchen table – the new home office. With this rapid change and little time to prepare, we are seeing an increase in phishing scams, home network attacks, and new security threats related to virtual meeting tools such as Zoom. So how do you secure your home office?
These 10 cybersecurity tips will help you secure your business, data and customer information while working from home.
1. Use strong passwords. Ensure all accounts, applications and devices are protected with unique, strong passwords. Strong passwords include upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special characters. You can also create a passphrase. Don’t recycle or reuse the same password across multiple accounts or applications. This helps ensure a cyber criminal cannot access all of your accounts if they obtained your favorite universal password.
*Pro Tip: Use a password manager to create, remember and autofill passwords.
2. Use a VPN. Use a Virtual Private Network to connect to any work-related networks or applications to keep hackers or other snoops out. A VPN creates a tunnel or link between your computer or device and an outside network. It also encrypts your internet traffic making it unreadable to anyone who intercepts it. Remember to connect to the VPN daily and ensure updates are completed.
3. Secure your home Wi-Fi. To prevent malicious parties from gaining access to your devices, use encryption (WPA2 or WPA3 with a long and complex password), turn off the WPS function and delete the Guest Wi-Fi. Also make sure firmware updates are installed to address security vulnerabilities.
*Pro Tip: Change both your router password and Wi-Fi password.
4. Set up firewalls. Prevent unwanted connections to your systems by using a firewall. A firewall monitors and controls incoming and outgoing traffic. It creates a barrier between your device and untrusted external networks, such as the internet, by closing open ports to communication. This will prevent malicious threats and bad actors from getting in.
5.Use antivirus software. Verify your antivirus is running and updated to include the most recent malware signatures. Utilize antivirus software that does more than alert you of a virus. Choose one that can protect against ransomware, prevent infections from USB storage, protect mobile devices, and one that can block access to inappropriate websites.
6. Update your systems regularly. One of the easiest things to do – make sure all your operating systems, apps, software, web browsers, extensions, etc. are updated. These updates often include patches for new or known security vulnerabilities since the last release of the software. Which are exactly what cybercriminals use to hack into your system.
*Pro Tip: Don’t ignore those system updates – no matter how inconvenient it seems to stop, install the update, and reboot your device. Set updates to run automatically if possible.
7. Set up two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA or MFA). While strong, unique passwords are a first line of defense, 2FA provides another layer of security. Two-factor auth requires that you complete an extra step when logging in or accessing information. That second step could be an email or text confirmation. Or it could be facial recognition or a fingerprint scan (biometric methods).
8. Don’t Feed the Phish. Be particularly aware of phishing attempts that have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also be wary of vishing (voicemails), or smishing (text messages) – two other social engineering attacks used to “phish” for information. These attacks target users to steal their personal information and gain access to accounts to commit crimes such as credit card fraud our account take over fraud.
*Pro Tip: Learn to spot a phishing email by checking the sender’s email address, check for spelling errors, and look for poor grammar. Question any kind of sense of urgency or request for money or gift cards.
9. Back up your data. Backups (copying and storing of data) protect your organization from data loss in case of a breach. Do backups frequently and on a regular schedule to ensure data can easily be restored from its alternate location. Critical data should be updated on a more frequent schedule then static data. Also know where your data is stored, such as a cloud storage system. Automate your backups to remove human error.
10. Visit secure sites only. Always verify the site you are on is legitimate by checking its credibility. A secure site will have an SSL certificate which will be reflected as HTTPS in the sites URL. (Example: https://www.techstak.com)
*Pro Tip: A secure website will have a padlock symbol in the upper left-hand corner of your browser in front of the website URL.
Now more than ever it’s important to stay up to date on cybersecurity for your home office. Stay in the know on current threats and best practices to help you stay safe!
For more cybersecurity tips and resources – including a WFH Security Awareness Toolkit – visit TechStak at www.techstak.com. Also, check out https://www.techstak.com/work-from-home-cybersecurity-essentials.html for more security tools. All of these resources are free as our way in supporting small businesses through these difficult times.
TechStak was launched to give small businesses an easy way to find essential IT, cybersecurity and other tech solutions that are the right fit for their needs. As a small company, we think that finding the right outsourced firms you can trust with the keys to your business should not be a time-consuming, daunting process. So, we simplified it. We’re on a mission to help businesses make confident tech outsourcing decisions by providing the most comprehensive network of trusted, vetted providers and tech-related resources, all backed by personalized support.