Currently, we’re all going through uncertain times thanks to the ongoing pandemic!
This has not only turned the entire work dynamic upside-down but also resulted in an increasing number of cyberattacks, as firms have scrambled to implement remote working.
“Due to this, the majority of businesses have started relying on their employees now more than ever to protect their organisation from potential cyber-intrusions.”
That said, in this article, we’ll be discussing some crucial areas that your IT team can focus on to ensure that your business is prepared for every challenge that comes it’s the way.
While these tips are excellent for any circumstances where the majority of your employees are working from home, it’s all the more relevant during high-profile situations that cybercriminals are likely to take complete advantage of.
Let’s dive in!
Open Up Your Business Disaster Recovery Plan
With all your employees working from home, now is the perfect time to think about how your organisation can conduct smooth operations and ensure efficient data protection.
Additionally, you’ll have to ensure that your IT disaster recovery plan minimises the system downtime and keeps operational discrepancies at a bare minimum should your business face a network failure or cyber-attack. You also need to make sure your continuity planning along with other IT systems is frequently updated.
Check Your Cyber Security Posture
In order to ensure that your mission-critical endpoints are updated and patched, it’s important for you to spend some time on both your IT management team and business security.
By focusing on these activities, you can see to it that your employees have complete access to all the networks and information whenever they need it.
Along with system updates, you need to take stock of the current state of your IT environment and ask your in-house team to fix any gaps or issues in your cybersecurity posture. You might even want to avoid unplanned system updates during this time as that could make your business more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Validate Your Compliance Posture
Amid this crisis, the one question that your IT team is likely to receive is – How can we maintain our company’s compliance posture?
“In a perfect world, your compliance is the by-product of a finely tuned and well-run IT security program.”
However, during uncertain times, you may have to partially relax your security controls so that you can give way to the immediate needs of your customers and employees.
While this tolerance adjustment might be suitable for the current circumstance, it could have a certain impact on your business’ compliance posture. This is why you need to focus on areas that could pose threats to your organisation and ensure the same is being expressed to your team.
Revisit the SLAs
A crucial factor that your business needs to focus on is the service delivery for both your employees and customers.
Many organisations are likely to grapple with this but to ensure that it doesn’t happen with your business, you need to constantly keep tabs on areas that are vulnerable to risks and possibly have a huge impact on your workflow.
Moreover, when there’s a problem in the real world, cybercriminals take complete advantage of people’s fear and the uncertainty surrounding the situation. This is why now is the right time to revisit your SLAs and make sure you’re prepared to face any IT challenges that are thrown your way.
Create an Awareness Communication for Your Employees
“This is the perfect time for you to create a cybersecurity awareness communication for your business that talks about crucial areas your staff needs to consider while working remotely.”
The key message that must be conveyed through the communication includes the use of a VPN that has the potential to support enough load and use of admin authorised storage solutions to protect important data. On top of this, you also need to ask your employees to stay vigilant for online scams.
Seek Assistance from Your Vendors and Partners
Trusted vendors and partners can help your business to steer through this crisis by offering robust solutions to deal with the sudden surge of online load created due to the new work from home model.
Additionally, this approach of seeking assistance from your vendors and partners will help you reinforce the relationship and partnership that you share with them. It’ll also allow you to keep delivering quality service to both your customers and employees.
So Is This the Right Time to Implement Changes?
This is one tricky question that is likely to keep popping up in your mind every now and then.
While now is not really the right time to implement substantial changes to your day-to-day operations and IT systems, it’s certainly the time for you to maintain your cybersecurity posture to enable employee productivity and business continuity.
On top of that, you also have to articulate the impact a cyber attack can have on your operations and accordingly make adjustments in your security controls!
Conclusion
While every business has been impacted by this pandemic, although in different ways, know that everyone is focusing on achieving the same thing – new and innovative ways to secure the organisation and its mission-critical data.
That said, if your business has had silos in the past, then it’s best to focus on breaking them down as it’ll not only serve you better during the on-going crisis but also after things go back to normal!
