How to work more securely from your home office

Provide your staff with security knowledge

Make sure they know how to be aware of online scams, phishing emails, be careful when connecting to public Wi-Fi, secure home routers and to keep work devices and private devices separate.

There will always be IT scammers who take advantage of a crisis, hence, it's important your staff is prepared and careful.

Setup a VPN for your home workers (An in-depth article on VPN)

A VPN has several advantages, especially for people working from home. It will hide the IP address, encrypt data, and hide the users location.
If you do not have a VPN service setup, we advise you to do your research on it and see which VPN service meets your needs.
Also, once the VPN is setup, remind your employees the VPN should be used for work related activity only. AnyTech365 offers a secure router with VPN features

Install and keep your anti-virus program up-to-date.

When sending your employees home, make sure their work devices are protected. For example, virus checkers and firewalls are a must-have or they won’t be able to work securely from their home office.

Password checks

It does not mean you have to have access to all passwords of your employees, but remind them to update their passwords regularly and make sure they use complex passwords.

​Maintain an up-to-date system

Before sending your staff home, make sure all their devices are up-to-date. Windows Updates can cause problems here and there, which you want to avoid when they are home and do not know what to do.

Wi-Fi security

Advise your employees working from home to change the password of their Wi-Fi on a regular basis, to keep it updated and secure.
As mentioned before, warn them about connecting to public Wi-Fi and how to stay safe and use public Wi-Fi only when absolutely needed.

Back-up

Encourage your staff to perform regular backups of their systems, to avoid data loss.
If you have a CRM system with a drive attached, staff should upload there, if not, encourage them to use external drives to create back-ups.

Boost the team spirit

For many employees being a homeworker is a new experience. Given the reason why many people are working from home now, it is important to boost the team spirit and make sure people stay in communication with one another. Not only for the work efficiency, but also for the mental health of employees that are by themselves.
Motivate your staff to interact with each other, organize group facetime for a morning coffee from home, implement workouts through home exercise apps – mostly, make sure people stay happy!

Not only should the PC be secured, these days it's also important to protect your smartphone, click here to read our 6 Tips to protect your smartphone.