Increased home working: What should you do to combat the new COVID-19 cyber risk?
Organisations grappling with a variety of issues raised by the coronavirus should ensure that ‘increased cyber risk’ is on the list of new risks to manage.
In response, the UK’s national cybersecurity centre (the NCSC) published Guidance on 17 March 2020 https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/home-working
The Guidance focusses on how organisations can:
· prepare for an increase in home working; and
· spot coronavirus scam emails.
Increased home working:
Increased home working is now a reality for many organisations, with others looking to follow suit. The Guidance makes several general recommendations to support secure home working, which includes:
- Providing written (‘How do I ….’) guides for staff who may not be familiar with using new software, or using familiar applications differently.
- They also note that their Guidance on implementing SaaS applications may help with the procurement of new services (such as chatrooms and document sharing) to enable continued workforce collaboration. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/saas-security
- Encrypting data at rest on remote devices as devices are more likely to be stolen or lost when staff are away from the office, and ensuring that devices can be locked remotely.
- Ensuring staff know how to report any security issues, and are trained (or reminded of their training) on cyber matters. The NCSC recommends that staff work through its Top Tips for Staff e-learning package.
- https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/ncsc-cyber-security-training-for-staff-now-available
- https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/training/top-tips-for-staff-web/story_html5.html
The Guidance also covers security basics such as
- Using strong passwords when setting up new accounts for remote working and
- Ensuring VPNs (which allow remote users to securely access work systems) are fully patched and have sufficient licences and bandwidth to manage an increase in users.