I remember a few years ago when our biggest cybersecurity concern was if our firewall was robust enough to protect our systems. When we were all clustered together in an office, this was the issue. We were able to assess threats, install a robust firewall and watch our data and traffic in real time for threats. Yes, it sounds like a medieval city where you build a robust wall around your castle and everyone inside is safe.
Those are not the times we live in anymore. With distributed workforces the questions now become expansive with greater issues to resolve. Yes, we still need a firewall for our host systems in our building, but how do we do that if our applications and our data are in the cloud? How do we monitor our email and protect our workforce from phishing and scams and embedded worms in document macros? And what about all the teleconferencing and other collaborative systems we now use?
This occurred to me based on a recent experience where friends of mine, used to working in an office, are suddenly working at home and using their personal devices to work because no one at her company anticipated they would need a bunch of laptops in a short period of time! My friend asked me if she should put a password on her laptop since she’s now working from home. Well, yes! You should have done that 10 years ago, but that’s another conversation.
Let’s start with your cloud-based systems. Do you know where your data is located? Do you know how your employees are accessing your data and more importantly what are they doing with that data? Most likely you do know some of this, but not all. How can you protect your data in the cloud? Are you encrypting your online information? If so, does it need a client decryption tool on home devices? Do your employees know how to install and configure this by themselves?
I have also heard recently “Oh, we just use email and don’t have to worry about our cloud data.” Your may think you’re safe, but remember that viruses don’t kill an organization, people do. It takes a human click to activate a malware link and infect your entire organization.
Are you tracking your employees’ use of email? Are they sending out forms and data and contracts and other sensitive corporate information? If we sent a blind email to all your employees that appears to be a 10% discount offer from Starbucks, do you think one employee would click on that link? One of the easiest steps you can take for protection is advanced email encryption techniques for all your employees – whether on their laptops or handheld devices.
At Tek.Advisors, we have very robust and proven market-ready email protection. Encryption techniques can now handle such instances as when one of your employees sends an email containing a confidential financial report to an accountant. However, after they hit “send” they realize that their email client autofill sent the report to a different person – not the intended recipient. We can show you how to protect your organization from that occurrence.
What about collaboration software? Are you using any number of group chat applications for holding meetings? Are they secure? Are your employees sharing data through these apps? Do you have this type of collaboration between two companies? Wouldn’t you feel better if you knew you could do your security and quarantine efforts in the cloud?
Depending on your answer to some of these questions we may be able to point you in the right direction. From cloud based security to advanced email security our experts can assist with encryption, content recognition and secure content distribution to mitigate the new risks imposed on your organization by the new normal.