Assessing The Risks of Working at Home

happy young woman relax at home on sofa

The Coronavirus has forced many companies away from their normal working environment and have switched to working from home. While this has some benefits to making sure the virus doesn’t spread between coworkers, it does raise a concern that employees at home networks might not be as secure as the regular office.

In many offices, Wi-Fi and internet connections are normally under a layer of encryption that is unique to said server. Set up correctly, only the people that have access to the Wifi password should be able to access your networks. Working from home poses a different risk as many networks aren’t as secure as corporate offices. With more people on these networks, it can lead to compromised networks unknowingly. In the UK for example “Nearly three-quarters of business decision makers (71 per cent) believe that the shift to 100% remote working during the Covid-19 crisis has increased the likelihood of a cyber breach, according to new data released by cyber security company Centrify, a leading provider of Identity-Centric privileged access management solutions.”[1]

As it is, companies need to determine if their home cyber security is enough to safely work from home. Set up a checklist to figure out how secure your employees Wi-Fi is and what they need to do to improve their security.

[1]http://www.thecommentator.com/article/7652/remote_working_has_increased_risk_of_a_cyber_breach_say_over_70_of_uk_businesses