6 Tips for Wireless Security for a Remote Team

Working with a remote team has now become the norm for many Los Angeles area businesses as well as those throughout the country. The pandemic stay-at-home orders gave companies no choice but to figure out how to make a virtual business work.

But this change isn’t just a temporary one. Remote working is looking like it’s here to stay. Many businesses have already put the necessary cloud solutions in place to allow employees to easily work from home and plan to continue the practice.

Benefits include higher productivity, lower costs, and being ready for anything should another similar event occur in the future.

77% of businesses say that post-pandemic, they’ll have more employees working remotely 3 or more days per week.

One of the biggest challenges when you have employees working from multiple locations is wireless network security. How do you ensure all those connections are secure when they’re not all connecting through the same router?

We’ve got several tips below on safeguards you can put in place to ensure wireless network security for all your work-from-home (WFH) employees.

Network Safeguards for Employees Working from Home

User Good Router Security Practices

While each employee may be using a different type of router for their home network, there are some universal safeguards they can all take to make their network more secure.

These include:

By making it harder for a hacker to get into a router, one important layer of security is added that can work with the other tips below to create a secure network environment for someone working from home.

Keep Router Firmware Updated

People will often never log back into their router control panel after setting it up for the first time, which leaves the device at risk for a hack because security updates aren’t being applied.

Employees should regularly log into their router to check for and apply any security updates and patches that may have been issued.

Use a Guest Network for Work Devices

Adding a layer of separation between home devices, which may be riskier, and work devices that contain sensitive data is another smart way to increase wireless network security.

Children’s gaming computers or tablets and IoT devices are often easier to breach than standard computers and laptops. Which means that a hacker could jump over to a work computer from a hacked IoT device if they share a network.

Have employees set up a guest network on their home router. Then use the guest network exclusively for work devices. This will reduce risk and improve their security.

Use a Business VPN

One of the best protections that a business can use when it has employees connecting from different Wi-Fi networks is a virtual private network (VPN). A business VPN has multiple advantages, the biggest of which is to encrypt all traffic.

Even if an employee is on an unsecure network or a free public Wi-Fi, if they connect through a VPN application, their traffic will be encrypted and remain secure.

VPNs can be used both for computers and mobile devices and having a business plan with a VPN service allows you even more control and security features when administering your remote workforce.

Put DNS Filtering In Place on Devices

Links to malicious sites are being used much more often these days in phishing emails over file attachments containing malware. Hackers use links to bypass antivirus/anti-malware security. Links are also often less suspicious to users, so they’re more susceptible of falling prey to the phishing scam.

What DNS filtering does is check a domain before redirecting the user’s browser. If it detects a malicious site or one known to be dangerous, it will redirect the user to a warning page instead of the site. This saves people from becoming infected with malware even after they’ve clicked a malicious link.

Use Multi-Factor Authentication with Cloud Accounts

Most business data is now kept in the cloud and hackers are increasingly going after cloud login credentials. Logins are now the #1 type of data sought in phishing attacks.

The best way to keep user cloud accounts secure and protected from a breach is to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all accounts. It’s proven to stop a majority of attempted account compromises.

Do You Need Help Securing Your Remote Network?

If you need help securing your wireless network for remote workers, Neuron Computers can help. We’ll put the safeguards and best practices in place to ensure your data and cloud accounts are properly protected.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Call 1-833-4-NEURON or reach us online.