How to Mitigate 3 Data Security Risks of Hybrid Employees in Clearwater

Things have certainly changed in the past few years. The Great Resignation saw such unprecedented employment shifts that now it’s pretty much normal for people to work from home. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty much normal for IT professionals to pull their hair out over the security risks this new development poses to their operations. 

3 Security Risks of the Hybrid Employment Model

While there are a lot of benefits to hybrid employment, there are also a lot of potential problems associated with employing remote workers in your business. Let’s look at 3 of the most significant: 

1. GDPR and Data Governance Concerns

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) statute in the EU has major implications for remote workers because they’re accessing company assets from private networks with weak security. 

The worst-case scenario would be if they decided to work from a coffee shop with an open network. It is even possible to work remotely from the beach, at least in theory, and this poses some major questions about how effectively your organization can implement its data governance protocols. 

Will you be able to maintain compliance in the age of the hybrid employee? 

2. Weak Passwords

This consideration isn’t just a matter of company policy about using strong passwords on company applications. It’s also about whether your remote-working employees are implementing the utmost security on their own equipment. 

What if an employee is working in a public place and steps away from their laptop for a few moments? What if their laptop isn’t password-protected or has a weak password like “12345”? There goes the planet. 

3. Public Networks

This last risk is problematic indeed. If your employees were working at your facility, they would do most of their work on your intranet, which, by virtue of the fact that most of it isn’t even connected to the outside world, is a lot safer than doing literally all of your business in the clear, on public networks that aren’t even encrypted. Yikes. 

What to Do About It

Step one: do not pull your hair out. Step two: call ShredQuick for immediate assistance with a customized solution through our Data Protection Portal. We have a three-tiered approach to locking down your company’s data security in this brave new world:

• Privacy assessment and policy templates
• Threat scanning
• Breach support

Call us today to find out how we can take the stress out of the rise of the hybrid employee.