Remote working & cybersecurity: is your company prepared?

With lockdown in force, many companies now rely on remote working. But in the urgency of the Covid-19 crisis, have you done everything to optimise the work of your staff and protect the data of your organisation? 

Badly prepared, you risk increasing your exposure to cyberattacks. These cyber threats can take several forms. They may be:

• Phishing: theft of confidential data (password, banking information, etc.)
• Ransomware: an attack with malicious software that holds an organisation’s data hostage. The ransomware encrypts and blocks all of the company’s files. Following this attack, the hacker then demands a ransom in exchange for a key that makes it possible to decrypt them again.
• Theft of data directly on the corporate network following a malicious intrusion.
• Fraudulent transfer order (FOVI): through this scam – sometimes called “CEO fraud” – the criminals deceive the employees of a company into transferring money to them by passing themselves off as the chief executive. 

When total lockdown was called in France, on 17 March 2020, the level of preparation for remote working varied a great deal from one company to another. So, to help you protect your information system from any cyber-attack, here is some advice. It is aimed at employers as much as at remote workers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Employers, think VPN and backups
• Employees, here is how to maximise your remote working conditions
• Remote working and cybersecurity: after lockdown

Employers, think VPN and backups

1. First of all, deploy secure internal equipment to your staff as far as possible. During this lockdown period, all of them may end up working with their personal equipment. Yet nothing guarantees us the security level of these tools normally intended for personal purposes (social networks, streaming, etc.).
2. Limit access to your data from outside: to do this, grant that access to a restricted number of staff or to essential departments.
3. Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to allow your employees to access your infrastructure from outside. A VPN encrypts external connections, and strengthens the digital security of your system by authorising access only to authenticated devices. 
4. Remember to regularly update the fixed and mobile equipment made available to your employees. These updates are necessary, indeed essential, because, without them, hackers can access your data through security flaws.
5. Regularly make two backups of all of your data: first on external hosting (Cloud), then secondly on a medium disconnected from your network (such as an external hard drive protected by a password).
6. Equip your devices with professional antivirus software. There are several (Bitdefender, Avast Business, etc.). Depending on your IT estate, it has to be able to support Windows or Linux environments, or both. It has to be constantly up to date with existing threats, and to offer protection against the most recurrent threats (viruses, cryptomining…).
7. Monitor the activity linked to external access to your system. And this, in order to detect any abnormal activity and any suspicious connections that could be a sign of a cyberattack.

Employees, here is how to maximise your remote working conditions

1. Optimise the spread of the Wifi network in your home. To do this, Arcep (the Communications Regulatory Authority) recommends placing your box in a central room of your home, in a clear spot, and avoiding putting any other wireless equipment (such as a telephone) nearby.
2. If you have fibre, on your box you can dedicate a Wifi network to your workstation. Indeed, the boxes used with fibre have two independent Wifi networks. According to Arcep, you can dedicate one to your employer’s VPN, and the second to the leisure use of your family. That way, you will not suffer a network slowdown if one of your children starts streaming video while you are working. 
3. Another solution if the Wifi network slows down because there are many of you connected to it at home: connect your computer to the box with an Ethernet cable.
4. On the security side, before connecting to sensitive company data, remember to check that your Wifi access is secured with a strong password, including upper case, lower case, numbers and special characters.
5. Finally, so as not to saturate the VPN of your company, opt for collaborative tools to work remotely with your colleagues. Platforms such as Office 365 or G Suite allow several of you to work on any type of document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), to communicate easily by chat or video (Hangout or Teams), and to share documents (OneDrive or Google Drive). In this period of intensified remote working, these tools prove their value and their effectiveness once again: 
6. they allow us to maintain a certain productivity during lockdown, 
7. they ensure a common level of information between each member of staff, 
8. and they reduce the time spent on pointless exchanges and meetings.

Remote working and cybersecurity: after lockdown

Once lockdown is over, it is a safe bet that remote working will gain ground in companies. Until now, unlike their European and Anglo-Saxon counterparts, there were still many French companies reluctant to accept remote working.

In 2017, only 3% of French people used this practice according to Dares (the Directorate for the Coordination of Research, Studies and Statistics). These remote workers were mainly managers. 

Following this health and economic crisis, it is highly likely that many employers will change their minds.

At Premaccess, cybersecurity and collaborative working are part of our DNA. If you would like advice and support on these subjects, do not hesitate to contact us. 

Whatever the size of your company, guaranteeing your intellectual property is essential. Our teams regularly carry out cybersecurity audit assignments inside companies. Objective: analyse your processes, the workstations, the passwords used, etc. in order to assess your cyber-defence maturity, put the useful tools in place, and secure ever more of what makes your organisation strong, your skills and your know-how.