For the New Year, consider a beneficial perk to offer your employees. The ability to work while on the move or working from the home while staying connected to the office helps both employees and employers by increasing productivity. This can be accomplished within a safe and controlled environment as long as a few policies and precautions are followed. Whether you are a large or small company, establishing best practice policies is extremely important to avoid security issues and intrusions.A few quick and easy policies to keep in mind when providing outside access to your network is to make sure all devices are password protected including Droids, iPhones, iPads, etc. No matter the platform, all smartphones and tablet users should be encouraged to keep Apps up to date. As new updates become available make sure they are downloaded, so new security vulnerabilities can be addressed and alleviated.
In addition, employee home office network configurations should include a business class firewall / router and wireless encryption. You should require all employees with home access to review home network set-ups with the IT department or network support provider to avoid a remote user from unknowingly becoming a security risk. Simple things can be accomplished, such as creating an internal network IP rather than utilizing the service providers external IP’s.
Finally, all computers that are accessing the network whether onsite or offsite should be fully patched and updated with the latest Windows releases on a weekly basis to cover the latest security threats. IT departments should deploy the newest updates, but Group policy can also be set to force users to download the latest updates too.
Reviewing and implementing a few security protocols and practices as stated above will keep employees functioning and connected outside the office, while also keeping employer networks safe from intrusions. Wishing everyone a happy healthy 2014.
