Once upon a time - In many industries – for many roles – working from home was an exception but has become something of a rule. Some businesses have found it hard to recruit/retain staff without allowing WFH. Many of these businesses have decided they have no choice but to amend the “place of work” within their employment contracts and move on.
This shift to WFH has created many new challenges for businesses. Maintaining company culture is one – training juniors another. IT security is a third that is often ignored.
Cyber security risk is a function of the surface area that you expose to the outside world. When all the users of your finance system were in the office, using desktop PC’s that were hardwired to your network – the risk was rather less than that associated with staff now using their own devices, connecting through their own WiFi connections. Asking all staff to come back into the office isn’t an option. The only credible response is to upgrade your device management, phishing/malware protection and, critically, your identity management.
Identity management is about discipline and monitoring. It’s about:
- Ensuring that users only have access to the applications and network resources that their job requires – that they only access these apps and resources using devices that you rec0gnise, from the places you expect.
- Monitoring activity on your network to spot unusual behaviour or exceptions to these rules
- Taking appropriate action to respond to attempts to hack into your systems.
How TSG Help
Ask us to come in and assess your current level of cyber preparedness. We’ll do so against industry standards (Cyber Essentials and NIST) and make any necessary recommendations in a very practical way – prioritised to help you understand the next best steps.
