Running a remote business? You’re far from alone. Right now, increasing numbers of businesses are deciding to work on a permanently remote basis. Sure, this couldn’t have been imagined a couple of years ago. But the coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed the typical working landscape. As governments encouraged people to work from home to slow the spread of the virus, many businesses and employees found that operating in this way actually worked better for them.
From a business perspective, remote work reduces outgoings. You don’t have to pay for commercial premises, overheads such as energy bills or employee expenses. As an employee, you don’t have to spend time commuting in the morning, can save on fuel costs and parking costs and get to work from an environment you’re more comfortable in. If you run a business and you’re planning on sticking with remote work for the long run, you could be onto something good. Of course, you need to consider one thing first and foremost — security.
By Team Savant
Image: Dan Nelson
Why Consider Security?
Cybersecurity is extremely important when running a remote business. When your staff work in an office, you can put measures in place to keep cybercriminals at bay. You can observe behaviour, allocate specific devices and more to ensure that the data and information on devices is secure. When your staff work from home, you’re going to have to ensure that staff are working safely through other measures. This can prevent cyber criminals accessing data, committing fraud, stealing or leaking protected information.
VoIP
You might want to start out by implementing a VOIP in your business. VoIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol” and is essentially a phone system that connects calls using the internet. By having access to a VOIP Phone, your employees will be able to make any of the calls they need to make over their laptops, computers or other devices that they are using in remote locations, rather than resorting to using their personal phones. As well as being more secure, VoIP also is generally a lot more cost effective too.
VPN
VPN is something else that you should look into. This stands for “virtual private network”. This means that your staff will connect to your chosen network, rather than connecting to their own private networks, which could prove to be insecure. This removes an easy access route for cyber criminals into your business. All too many business owners make the mistake of assuming that cyber criminals only target large businesses with huge amounts of money. The truth is that they tend to attack smaller businesses, hoping that they haven’t invested in such high tech security practices, training and software.
Training
All staff should receive cybersecurity training. This will help to alert them to professional threats and can ensure that people are more wary with sharing information or access to data when working for your business. There are plenty of courses out there, so make sure to choose accredited options.
These are just a few different things you can do to maximise security when encouraging your team to work well and safely remotely.