While one of the most difficult aspects of growing a home business is getting employees, once you overcome this hurdle, and you have other people working remotely, it can be a challenge to keep everybody on the same page. Ultimately, you are not able to see them all under one roof, but also, you have to think about the fact that your remote workers need some form of protection.
This is where the right tech comes in handy. It’s essential that you protect your business by ensuring your remote workers are as productive and secure as possible but how can you accomplish this?
Limiting the Number of Devices They Use
You may be relying on your employees to use their own devices, and while it’s best that you supply them with their own work-related computer, this can be difficult. After all, it’s quite costly. Moreover, while many people rely on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, what may benefit is to have a combination of company-owned devices as well as their own. This means that data leakage is a very likely prospect. Limit the number of devices, and you will reduce the problems.
Providing the Best Security Software
You can easily set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network), or make the most of managed IT services to provide the framework, but if you have employees that want to set up shop in an open Wi-Fi network, this leaves your business wide open to data breaches. It is important that you provide your employees with the best security software so that they have the opportunity to update their home computer with the latest software patches. In addition, this means that the onus is on you to ensure that they are sufficiently protected. It can be a very difficult thing to monitor. While there are many remote workers that enjoy the freedom of working remotely, as far as the technical aspects are concerned, it is down to you.
Encryption
If you are assigning devices to workers, it is vital to ensure that they are encrypted so the data is stored on the machine directly. Also ensure the connections to the company network are done via a VPN or a secure cloud, you are minimizing stress and data breaches. In addition to this, an encrypted email program is just common sense. As many people will check company email off-site, this is very much the forefront of what you should be looking to achieve. After all, emails are sent at such an increasing rate; every time an email is sent without encryption, this could leave you open to phishing scams.
Let’s not forget, it’s also about employing best practices. You should increase your employees’ awareness of what would happen if they went on questionable websites. In addition to this, good password hygiene is important. Prompting them to create a complex password, as well as looking after their devices in their home setting, and limiting where they take their information, should form part of an IT security policy. It’s a combination of the right technological protection, but also ensuring that employees know what will happen if there is a data breach.
Remote workers are separate in many ways, and this can mean that they are left out of the loop. Nevertheless, this means you have to improve your communication with them. As a way to work with remote employees, you will naturally learn a way to improve your communication, but this also means that when it comes to the technological aspects, you have to work twice as hard.