6 Quick Cybersecurity Must-Haves to Support a Remote Workforce

By Steve Cobb, CISO, One Source

As the Coronavirus dilemma begins to affect all aspects of our professional and personal lives, many companies are encouraging their workforce to work remotely. This can be a great method of exercising “social distance”, but it can also greatly increase your companies’ risk to cyber threats. One Source has seen a sharp rise in phishing credential stealing and vulnerability exploitation attempts related to the virus and its affects. Here are some quick security tips to consider as your employees start to move to a remote workforce. These tips are geared to the small enterprise and mid-market companies that might not have the infrastructure, skills, or resources to already have measures in place.

1. Enforce MFA on ALL corporate websites and access, including O365 and VPN
   Do this now! Like stop reading this and go turn this on right now!!! As users begin to leverage public websites to perform their daily duties, threat actors are going to ramp up efforts to steal credentials from your employees that they can then use to log into those sites.
2. DO NOT allow RDP through your firewalls.
   It might seem convenient to just enable RDP through your firewall, but this is a sure way to get compromised. If this is your only option, then make sure that firewall rules are tied to specific external IPs and specific internal IPs and use non default ports.
3. Enforce an EDR product on ALL computers that connect to your corporate network
   It is extremely risky and not recommended to allow employees’ personal computers to connect to your corporate network via VPN. If you must do this, make sure that all those endpoints are running the endpoint security product of your choice. It needs to be more advanced than just an anti-virus client.
4. Patch your endpoints
   Make sure that endpoints used to access the corporate network are patched for the OS and any 3rd party applications.
5. Enforce good password policies
   All employees that may be accessing the corporate network, locally or remotely, should be forced to use good password policies like complex passwords, adequate password change frequency, etc.
6. Monitor bandwidth and license usage
   We normally include availability and resiliency in our security discussions, so consider the logistics of your workforce moving to remote locations and what impact that has on bandwidth, licenses, and support. Overlooking these possible saturation points could affect the entire workforce.

These tips will greatly increase your security program as more and more employees move to remote work. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team for more information.

One Source is here to help you protect and defend your business with best-practices and personal consultation.
Contact us at (877) 651-1650.