The Coronavirus is coming and if the big companies are preparing, so should small businesses.  

Business  Insider reports, “As the coronavirus spreads across other parts of  Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, major companies like Microsoft,  Hitachi and Chevron are asking their workers to work remotely as a  measure against the rapidly-spreading disease.” Adding to that list; Twitter, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and SalesForce have all enacted remote work directives to prevent spread of the  disease before it impacts them on its terms instead of the businesses’. CNN has published a story with practical guidance on implementing a remote work policy. (see links below)  

As discussed in our last post, the time to plan for remote work is now, before epidemic impacts strain your business. You can read that post here https://weknowcyber.com/cyber-blog/f/remote-working-security-coronavirus. Implementing a plan that allows work to continue not only helps your healthy staff members, who may need to work elsewhere, but it also enables your sick employees to produce and keep earning their paycheck without taking sick days. 

Securing your “data in motion”, the information that is  being used and created collaboratively or being sent to cloud or email  recipients, should be a priority in your planning. Configuring your  staff’s systems to run over your own Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a  simple yet powerful measure you can take to protect your data in motion.  Additionally, affordable cyber measures such as Cloud based secure backups that provide data for recovery or Threat Monitoring that alerts you to malicious uses of your systems and data from intrusions, phishing and crypto hijacking can further strengthen your security. We Know Cyber can provide all these products in a single afternoon. 

Continuing operations is imperative for your business to remain profitable. Preparing your business to allow for remote work helps ensure continuing operations.  Making Cyber Security part of that plan protects your profitability by monitoring multiple access points using varied levels of security on home and other networks. Finally, work with your Human Resources team in the process to ensure your plan provides continuity with your current policies. 

References: 

https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-asking-employees-to-work-from-home-due-to-coronavirus-2020 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/success/coronavirus-remote-work/index.html