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How to stay sane and secure while working from home

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    • We live in an interconnected world of freedom and possibility. When it works, it's bliss. With the right (secure) technology, we can work anywhere. Video conferencing, live chat, social media and good old-fashioned email let us catch up with a home-based teammate or share reports with a partner in the opposite time zone. In times of crisis, mobile working is a necessity. When Italy and parts of China shut down to help limit the spread of COVID-19 (the coronavirus), many employers around the world also shut office doors and asked their people to log on from home. They didn't want to take the risk, and they were ready. If health and travel restrictions hit your area, you can keep calm and carry on if your company already has a secure virtual private network (VPN) access to the corporate network and an advanced approach to flexible working. When metropolitan life shifts off track I've lived and worked in London for two decades. As a recent graduate, like so many others who move to large cities, I was lured by the dream of streets paved with gold. And our world keeps getting more urban. UN research suggests by 2050, more than two in three people worldwide will live in a city. Any Londoner will tell you a transport workers' strike is as much part of London life as the chime of Big Ben. We never know until the final hour whether it will happen or what fresh chaos will ensue, like squeezing onto one of the city's iconic red buses after a two-hour wait, with a desperate hollar of, "Can someone please open a window?" In the technologically distant past (well, 2014), I worked in a trendy publishing house. In the center of my sleek glass desk was a state-of-the-art, large-screen desktop Mac. On the occasion of one memorable strike, this was little help. For two days, I donned sneakers and walked 10 miles to the office and back. I revelled in this new change of pace, discovering new streets and unexpected architecture, seeing my city in a new light. But for most who work in London, walking and cycling is not practical. Four million people commute for more than two hours a day. Home vs. office: Productivity is still a challenge Nowadays, working in an international team with Kaspersky, I choose the best times to go to the office, when face-to-face counts, and when the connection with peers and the business dynamic helps me most. But when public transport grinds to a halt, a pandemic hits or I just feel a bit lackluster, I know I can work just as well from home quarters as from headquarters. But how do you work from home and stay sane and productive? There's plenty of advice out there on how to work effectively at home. Having a dedicated workspace, working regular office hours and locking the cat in a separate room are all good strategies. Less often touched upon, is security. Here are some tips. https://youtu.be/J96DETNCZCw Discipline goes hand-in-hand with lack of discipline My homeworking strategy is, discipline meets mind-wandering. Discipline to time block, catch deadlines, get things done. The reward: a long lunch and Netflix episode, a brisk walk or trip to the store, a match or 10 of Angry Birds, then picking up the slack later. My home office routine is more like this freelancer's experience – certainly, I can fashion an impromptu meal in under eight minutes from the contents of a fridge-freezer. TV chefs rarely extol the virtues of tinned soup as a base ingredient for lunch, but take it from me, it's endlessly versatile. For variety, I'll work anywhere in the house, other than the bathroom. I sometimes miss the office water cooler chat, but there are alternatives. During my first foray into home working in 2010, I discovered Twitter, made many professional contacts (and friends) from it, and never looked back. For those working in teams, the popularity of project tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams means inspiration (or distraction) is just a click away. The rise and benefits of mobile and flexible working Mobile working is more than a trend. Stanford University found remote workers were 13 percent more productive than desk-based counterparts. And flexible working, when you have more choice about whether to work from the office or elsewhere, is on the rise, along with its productivity benefits. Work Foundation estimates 70 percent of organizations will have adopted mobile working by 2020. When HSBC surveyed its employees recently, it found 89 percent through flexible working was key to getting more work done. And the Global Shapers Survey, supported by the World Economic Forum, found nearly one in three under 30s chose work-life balance as critical criteria when considering a role. Yet many office-based businesses still can't, or don't, offer much choice for home working. During the height of the coronavirus crisis, a Global Web Index survey of UK and US people found only 10 percent were encouraged to work from home. It shouldn't be either/or. Offering flexible and mobile working means on-premises employees are more likely to give more back. How so? Imagine your sales star, Angela. She's just flown back from a conference in the US. She's been on the go for 72 hours, charming potential customers at the delegate party, trying to set up product demo calls and writing proposals on the 10-hour flight home. By the time her (delayed) flight lands, she's physically and mentally shattered. Imagine how she feels about having to get up with the lark, navigating rush hour traffic to slump onto her desk? How well will Angela perform today? Now instead, imagine Angela sleeps late and wakes recharged. She switches on her laptop and is ready to start selling. Flexible, mobile and teleworking are no longer anomalies, they're business as usual. Not doing it may mean when factors beyond your control affect your business, you're on the back foot – far behind competitors whose non-frontline and office employees are already working from where they are. Embedding a more flexible-friendly culture also means presenteeism, and clocking in and out, are no longer viewed as success. Mobile workers need better cybersecurity If you're a business owner or IT leader, you're probably wondering what the proliferation of remote and flexible working means for cybersecurity. From malware and ransomware to decentralizing control of your IT networks, you'll need to do some things to protect your business. You'll also need to introduce the right equipment, training and policies – including bring-your-own-device – to make sure telecommuters are working securely. Here are more recommendations for teleworking and security. Reading Kaspersky's Remote working: How to make the laptop lifestyle flow sweetly (and securely) for your business will also help keep your people happy and your business safe.
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The surprising facts about working from home

  • min read
    • Remote working, telecommuting, working from home. Whatever you call it, you can't have failed to notice how many more workplaces are offering or even expecting employees to work from home at least some of the time. You may be looking for remote working as a benefit for your next role, or considering offering it to your employees. Is home working just a trend, or is there evidence to support whether it works? I decided to find out what the research had to say. Here are eight crucial findings. 1.      Flexible working is fast-growing The 2019 IWG Global Workplace Survey of 15,000 professionals in 80 nations found 80 percent of businesses in Germany, 76 percent in Brazil and 58 percent in India had flexible working policies. Policies also seem to be translating into practice. Over 50 percent of survey participants reported they were working more than half the time remotely. What's the opportunity? Offering flexible working is now the norm. If your business isn't there yet, you may have to have some tough conversations to get things moving. Today's the day to start. 2.      Homeworking could give you an extra day per week A Stanford study that monitored around 500 employees in China's largest travel agency for two years found working from home increased productivity by over 20 percent. That's equivalent to an extra working day each week. The increase in productivity came from several ways employees changed how they were working. They took fewer breaks and less time off (such as sick days), but mostly, they just got through more work. Professor of Economics, Nicholas Bloom, explained these findings in his TedX Stanford talk in 2017. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oiUyyZPIHyY What's the opportunity? If you want to improve productivity, make sure home working is on the table. If you're already doing it but it's not delivering, your policy may need review, so the next point is salient. 3.      It's not for everyone The same Stanford study found that after the trial work-from-home period, around half the participants decided to be office-based in the future. What's the opportunity? Everyone's an individual, and your business homeworking policy should reflect this. Flexible or home working also means taking into account each employee's role, needs and preferences. Reconsider an 'all or nothing' approach to home working. 4.      Remote workers struggle to 'switch off' British researchers Alan Felstead and Golo Henseke assessed the evidence around remote working's impacts in 2017, using large-scale studies. They concluded there was good evidence that remote working reduces the strain of time-pressured work and lets employees better work around personal circumstances (like needing to be at home with a sick child or to get the washing machine repaired.) Homeworkers showed more overall job satisfaction, more commitment to their employer and a greater willingness to go above-and-beyond their role requirements. Researchers found one negative impact: Remote workers reported more difficulty 'switching off' and unwinding at the end of the day. What's the opportunity? Switching off and unwinding makes us better at our work. We should see it as part of our job. More so if we work from home, because the research suggests it's harder to do. Review your organization's health and well-being policy. If it doesn't place value on employees taking breaks and switching off, it should. No matter your seniority, you can cultivate a culture that values unwinding and doesn't expect your employees to be 'always on' just because they're at home, particularly if you're working with team members across multiple time zones. 5.      The value of homeworking may depend on the type of work A 2018 study of 273 self-selecting telecommuters and their supervisors found telecommuting improved performance for three types of employees: those with complex jobs, those who didn't need others to do their job and those who had low levels of interaction when in the office. They didn't find any types of jobs where homeworking decreased employees' performance. What's the opportunity? Knowing some roles tend to be better suited to remote working can help you organize your team better or diagnose the problem if home working isn't delivering expected benefits. Role-related benefits to remote working will always depend on the qualities of the person in the role. 6.      Cybercriminals have noticed more people are working from home Researchers noted the first wave of coronavirus-themed malicious activities, including spam, phishing and even malicious files. Targets have included those educational institutions and governments agencies that have been in the news for conducting learning and business remotely; cyber criminals are banking on their lack of IT resources and vulnerabilities like legacy software. What's the opportunity? Kaspersky's white paper Remote working: How to make the laptop lifestyle flow sweetly (and securely) for your business is a good place to start for security measures that enable remote working. In the event of a cybersecurity incident, prioritize good communication. The World Health Organization's (WHO) response to coronavirus email scammers pretending to be them is an excellent example of a promptly issued statement in plain language that raises awareness of cybercrime. 7.      Young talent values the opportunity to work from home, but not for the reasons you might think Younger employees (age 16 to 29) are most likely to want to work from home, according to Polycom's 2017 study, with 24,000 respondents in 12 countries. Interestingly, young employees named increased productivity as their top reason for wanting to work from home. What's the opportunity? If you're having trouble attracting early talent like graduates and apprentices, it's another reason to look at your flexible-working offer. But it might again point to the importance of having a health and wellbeing policy that supports true work-life balance, not just being at home. While claims of workshy youth seem to be eternal, the evidence suggests younger talent is more likely to be working longer hours and risking burnout. 8.      Offering remote working helps attract and retain more diverse talent Being more supportive of remote and flexible working will help companies attract and retain more women, in part because women are far more likely than men to shoulder care responsibilities. As this Felstead and Henseke research shows, working from home helps employees adapt to personal circumstances. But what about other groups under-represented in your workplace? Seekout describes remote working as "the single best secret of diversity recruitment." They cite the desire to work remotely as at the top of the list for many job-seekers, attracting more applicants overall, and homeworking has apparent attractions for women and disabled people. Where's the opportunity? You can only gain more top talent by making sure your job adverts highlight flexible working as a benefit. It's in the top two employee benefits applicants care most about. Attracting more applicants is, of course, just the first step in building a more diverse workforce. Minimizing unconscious bias helps make sure the best applicants get hired. Every company's needs are unique; many industries need the presence of people to make and deliver goods and services, serve customers or devise ideas together. But consider if your non-frontline staff could benefit from having the option to work at least some of the time remotely. These findings can support you in finding the best way to harness the power of remote working and guide you around common pitfalls. The one that gives me the most pause for thought (pun intended) is the importance of switching off and taking a break. No matter who you are – from apprentice to chief executive – your most important work might not just happen in your home office. It might be when you're doing nothing at all.
telecommuting cybersecurity

Cybersecurity for home working in a hurry

  • min read
    • Rushing to make decisions that have security consequences is never ideal. Equally, there are times when we get thrown a curve ball and must act quickly. If home-working is new for your company, and you need to get policies and systems in place fast, you'll want to know the cybersecurity risks and how to reduce them. Start here to make sure your staff are securely set up to work from home as soon as possible. Home internet connections can be vulnerable When your employees work in the office on the local network, your security solutions handle data exchange processes. But when employees work from home, there's an extra variable – internet service providers (ISPs). You can't control their ISP's security, which may mean their home connection is vulnerable to attack. The solution: A reliable virtual private network (VPN) For your employees to connect remotely to corporate resources, set them up with a reliable virtual private network (VPN). This makes a secure channel between their workstation and your infrastructure. You'll also need to disallow connections to corporate resources from external networks without a VPN. Behavior changes make attacks harder to spot When people work from home, their routines change. Telecommuters can't just walk over to a colleague to talk about something. Expect an increase in correspondence, including new participants – people with whom communication used to be purely verbal. These changes give attackers more opportunity, in particular for Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks – for example, using an account with an address similar to the victim's. In other words, a fake message asking for data will not seem as unusual as it normally might. The more relaxing home environment can make many people less vigilant. The solution: Using protected work email only, and staff knowing why First, employees at home should use only work email. This makes it easier to spot a cybercriminal's attempt to impersonate a colleague from an account on another domain. Second, protect your mail servers with technologies that can detect attempts to change the message sender, like our solutions for both mail servers and Microsoft Office 365. Third, before employees start working from home, make sure they get a crash course in cyberthreats. Use of leaky collaboration tools can rise Without face-to-face contact, employees may start using other ways to collaborate. Some might not be the most reliable – and must be set up correctly. For example, a Google Docs document with certain access permission configurations may be indexed by a search engine, leaking corporate data. The same thing can happen to data in cloud storage. A collaboration environment like Slack can also leak, and a randomly added outsider could get access to the whole history of files and messages. The solution: Choose a better collaboration environment Choose a collaboration environment with suitable security and features. Participants should need a corporate email address to register. It's often worthwhile appointing a dedicated administrator to issue and revoke rights as needed. Most important, before employees work from home, hold an awareness session – which could be remote. Insist they use only the approved collaboration system, and reiterate their responsibility for keeping corporate secrets safe. Risks of home computer use Generally speaking, not all employees have access to corporate laptops. And mobile phones are not suitable for all tasks. Employees might start using their home computers. This can pose a serious threat for companies with no Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. The solution: Protected corporate equipment or BYOD policy If possible, give home-working employees appropriately protected corporate laptops and phones. These should be protected with solutions that allow remote wiping of corporate information, keep personal and corporate data separate, and restrict the ability to install applications. Make sure the devices also automatically check for the latest critical software and operating system (OS) updates. If employees must use their own devices, introduce a BYOD policy for managing corporate data on those devices, for example, partitions for business and personal data. Insist employees install home antivirus software. Allow devices to connect to corporate networks only after confirming they have a security solution installed and an up-to-date OS. Others accessing employees' equipment It's one thing for employees to work at home alone during the day, but another if they go to a café or coworking space, where risks of leakage or compromise are far greater. The solution: access policies and awareness Security policies should require a password and automatic screen lock. And as with other cybersecurity issues in telecommuting, awareness training is a must to maintain overall vigilance. This article was published in March, 2020.
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About Secure Futures

Secure Futures magazine is your go-to business guide for opinions, trends and insight into the world of technology and cybersecurity. We help your business to bring on the future. Brought to you by Kaspersky, the global cybersecurity experts.

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