You or one of your employees may need to work while on the road for many reasons. Unfortunately, this can be dangerous if you aren’t careful. We wanted to take a few minutes to (hopefully) review some security best practices your entire team should follow should they ever find themselves working as they travel.
How Can You and Your Team Work Securely While Traveling?
You can—and critically, should—implement numerous safeguards when working outside the office, particularly while traveling. For instance…
Make Sure Everything is Password Protected
We frequently endorse the value of ensuring your assets are secured with sufficiently resilient passwords. This only becomes more important when you are in a public place using a public connection (more on this later).
Make sure that all your passwords are complex and unique. While this may sound challenging, using a password manager makes using many different passwords much easier, as you only need to remember the one that gives you access in the first place. We also recommend that multi-factor authentication (MFA) be in place at every opportunity.
Don’t Use the Provided Wi-Fi or Charging Infrastructure
Many airports, train stations, restaurants, and other public places offer free Wi-Fi service to visitors. Similarly, charging stations have become common features in these places. While often placed with good intentions, cybercriminals looking to infect a device or steal data can easily co-opt these utilities.
Rather than using these free services and utilities, relying on your device’s mobile connection is safer, using your own mobile device as a hotspot to connect your other devices. As for battery power, rechargeable external batteries are much wiser as you control them. This makes it far less likely that they are carrying malware on them.
Never Leave Your Technology Unattended
Just like you are told never to leave luggage unattended, the same goes for your technology. Obviously, there’s a high chance that it (and any data it contains) will be stolen, but there’s also the chance that it is infected or data is just read from it without the thief taking the actual device. Whatever the outcome, it is overwhelmingly bad, so keep your eyes on your devices and bring them wherever you go.
Keep Your Eyes on Your Surroundings
As we’ve established, data can be stolen even without the hardware containing it going missing. Those around you could just watch you type and figure out all they need to know. While it won’t be easy, do your best to keep your screen and keyboard out of sight from wandering eyes.
Use a VPN to Connect
Finally, if you must use a public-facing Wi-Fi connection, you should only do so if you have shielded your online activity with a business-grade virtual private network. By encrypting all traffic between your device and the network you are connecting to, you can deftly intercept anyone trying to intercept it.
Trust Us to Help Keep You Secure and Productive
Regardless of where work is being done, you can’t afford to sacrifice cybersecurity any more than you can afford to restrict your remote employees’ capabilities.
By working with North Central Technologies, that doesn’t have to be a choice you must make. Reach out to us at 978-798-6805 to learn more about what we can help you accomplish through your information technology.
