3 Popular Platforms and Technologies Helping Remote Companies Avoid Cybersecurity Threats

A growing number of companies are realizing the benefits of operating remotely. Firms buoyed by technological improvements and prospective financial gains are abandoning the traditional, in-house approach to conducting business, causing America’s remote workforce to rise to 4.7 million people.

This represents an increase of 91% over the previous decade, and this trend is likely to continue as the advantages remote work offer businesses become more widely recognized.

The Business Case for Working Remotely

As it has become more popular, numerous studies have been conducted into the benefits of remote working, with results suggesting that it offers many advantages to the employer as well as the employee:

A More Productive Workforce

Surveys have found that, on average, remote workers are more productive. They aren’t fatigued by the commute to work, or distracted by their coworkers; they benefit from a flexible schedule which allows them to take breaks when needed and complete work on their own time; and they are more self-motivated and inclined to go beyond their line of duty than someone working in-house.

Enhanced Recruitment Options

Allowing remote work also increases the pool of available talent when hiring employees. If a business is solely in-house, its recruitment options are largely limited to people residing within its locality, whereas a remote office can recruit globally.

On top of this, the desirability of remote work has the potential to attract a higher caliber of candidates and has been shown to improve employee retention rates by 10%.

Reduced Overheads

If a workforce is remote, its employer can forego the cost of providing a physical workspace. It’s estimated that switching to teleworkers provides employers with real estate savings of approximately $10,000 per employee per year.

Healthier Employees

Multiple studies have shown that individuals who work remotely are healthier than their counterparts who work in-house. In addition to showing a positive correlation between commuting and increased blood pressure, research has found that 82% of remote employees experience reduced stress levels as a result of working from home.

Given the benefits of having a healthier, increasingly motivated and more selectively recruited workforce, it’s understandable that more businesses are embracing remote work. But it also carries increased security risks, and any company conducting business over a remote network needs to protect itself accordingly.

The Cybersecurity Threats to Operating Remotely

Thankfully it’s possible to mitigate most cybersecurity risks simply by understanding them and establishing adequate protective measures.   

One point of vulnerability concerns authentication and authorization when people aren’t interacting face-to-face within the workplace, though this can be addressed with two-factor authentication (the process of requiring a second form of verification in addition to a username and password) and close monitoring of employees’ network access.

Remotely accessed networks are also more exposed to phishing and malware attacks; by allowing network access to a greater number of devices, each with different levels of inbuilt security, the risk of a breach is heightened, increasing the potential “attack surface” of the business.

Smaller companies lacking the necessary expertise or human resources capacity to sufficiently protect themselves are most vulnerable, and hackers may seek to penetrate their defenses in order to access partners further up the supply chain.

Most of these threats can be avoided by establishing sound working practices and ensuring that employees adhere to them, but it’s still important to use platforms with good levels of inbuilt security.

The Platforms and Technologies That Can Bolster Cybersecurity

Remote companies are particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, making it essential that they only use platforms and technologies which guarantee high levels of security. The best examples will go further, not only processing data responsibly but providing additional features that place customer safety at the heart of their product:

Slack

Slack, a business communications platform with over 8 million daily users, enjoys popularity throughout the tech industry. 

This is partially attributable to the company’s security features, which include SCIM provisioning, SAML-based SSO authentication and data encryption at rest, and the fact that it meets SOC 3, SOC 2, and HIPAA compliance regulations.

Slack’s features make it an ideal platform for internal communications within a remote workforce, but it’s important to remember that any company with this many users will be a target for cybercriminals. Even with its impressive security credentials, users should still enforce two-factor authentication, establish user provisioning and deprovisioning procedures, and never use it to communicate confidential information.

Microsoft Teams

Great for both internal and external communications, Microsoft Teams provides a secure location for making calls and delivering virtual conferences.

Microsoft has placed particular emphasis on privacy, giving users a number of controls over who participates in meetings and what content they can access; organizers can determine whether external participants join a meeting directly or “wait in the lobby” to be let in, remove participants during meetings, and control who is able to share information.

Microsoft also claims to process over 8 trillion security signals each day in order to protect its users from hackers and has built multi-factor authentication into the platform.

Virtual Cards

Virtual cards, like those offered by Privacy, are an innovative form of cybersecurity, providing defenses that conventional credit cards cannot.

Beyond allowing users to set spending limits — restricting the financial damage caused by hackers if they gain access to card information — the best virtual cards allow the use of pseudonyms, masking the cardholder’s identity during online payment processes and protecting them in the event of a data breach.

Privacy also offers businesses the use of disposable cards when dealing with one-off merchants; the card closes two minutes after the transaction is completed, rendering the card number useless and removing any risk of it being used by hackers. These features combine to provide business owners a novel form of financial protection and peace of mind when making online purchases.

As cybersecurity threats become more common, so too do the technologies and platforms available to guard against them. The advantages remote working offers employers are contingent upon being able to conduct business safely, making these technologies essential as working from home grows in popularity. If companies use the resources at their disposal, the continued uptake of remote work can be smooth. And both businesses and employees will benefit.