In the world of business, many are ushering in hybrid working as their permanent mode of working. Since the start of the pandemic, many of the businesses that were forced into remote working found that it worked really well for them. Other businesses saw some benefits, but also found a lot of their employees weren’t coping with the fully remote way of working.
Many IT support companies helped customers adapt to remote working, like TechQuarters, who spoke with us about hybrid working. One of the things they emphasized is the importance of Hybrid work security.
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What is Hybrid Working?
There may be some who do not know what hybrid working is. It shares many of the same principles and requirements as remote working – but it actually means that some employees in a business will be working in the office, while others will be working from home (and some may split their time and do both).
To enable hybrid working, employees must be able to work and communicate with the organization remotely. But it also requires remote workers to be included just as much as office-based employees.
What are the Security Risks of Hybrid Working?
For more than a decade, TechQuarters have been providing business IT support London companies rely on for their cyber security. They discussed the security risks of hybrid working, and concluded that all the traditional risks to a business’ cyber security remain present, but what makes hybrid working particularly risky is the fact that the network perimeter of a hybrid business is much wider, and could be stretched too thin.
With users located all over a country, and possibly all over the world, all of whom are connecting to company resources via many different internet connections, it becomes increasingly difficult for a business to guarantee their company data is fully protected.
How can Hybrid working be made more secure?
TechQuarters recommends firstly educating everyone in your organization about cyber security practices. This starts with safe browsing practices – knowing how to check if a website is safe and legitimate, being able to identify scams etc.
A business may also want to onboard all their users onto an enterprise-grade password manager – an average of 50 million password attacks are launched every day, all over the world; so implementing a strict password management policy in your business is a good idea.
The software your business uses also plays a part in your overall security. TechQuarters not only provide IT support services – they are one of the UK’s most trusted Microsoft Partners; they have onboarded many customers to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure in order to get their cyber security capabilities up to speed. One of the products included with Microsoft 365 business and enterprise plans is Enterprise Mobility + Security; this product enables a business to manage all endpoints in their organization, including the PCs and mobiles their employees use for work – it ensures that the company data on these endpoints are segregated from personal data, and encrypted for extra protection.
One recent piece of advice TechQuarters has been giving is that businesses should adopt Windows 11 on their work devices – this is because Windows 11 is built with minimum system requirements for security, in order filter out any hardware vulnerabilities; the security center in Windows 11 also makes it easier for the individual to monitor their own security, in addition to their company or IT support provider.