after walking to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, but at the same time, you cannot trust that every employee will always log out when they are done for the day. 3. Limit program/file access to only those areas that are absolutely needed by that employee. 4. Reserve the right to terminate employee access at any moment. 5. Provide services for remote file storage and other tasks; don’t rely on individuals to use their personal programs and accounts to store your company’s data. “Users will always take the easiest method when it comes to technology, and you can’t always enforce what software people use when they are remote, so it is better to give them the best software in the first place,” said Silver. Above all, Hay reminded employers to outline policies, procedures and guidelines for workers who use company resources outside the office. “This includes, but is not limited to, access to corporate data, acceptable use of websites, approved applications, etc.,” he said. “The best thing an employee can do is ensure that they adhere to the guidance.” For more tips to help workers keep their company or client data safe, visit our cybersecurity guide for freelancers. n
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“Ensuring that sensitive data is stored and protected centrally is always a good course of action,” Hay said. “This allows central management and control of all aspects of the data, such as ownership, access, availability, security, etc., with a reduced chance of duplicate copies residing in places beyond the reach of the organization, such as on a personal laptop, mobile device or cloud environment.” Gooty said his company was able to accomplish this after switching to an Office 365 subscription. “Not only does OneDrive for Business allow us to collaborate better with one another, but it also securely saves the files in the cloud. All employees can access files on different types of devices,” he said. Best practices for employers For small business owners, regardless of whether your company employs part- or full-time remote employees, Silver advised taking the following precautions to limit security risks while employees work from home. 1. Require that employees use a non-stored password to connect to the network, especially for VPN access. 2. Enforce reasonable session timeouts for sensitive programs or apps. A user should not have to reconnect
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The Business Review | March 2021
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