Remote Work Has a Hidden Challenge: Data Security. Here’s How Experts Overcome It
These best practices can make a huge difference for any startup with remote employees
By Cameron Albert-Deitch
Social Security numbers. Bank account information. Customer passwords. Every business needs to protect its most valuable data, and most offices have a common last-resort option: If you close and lock the doors, nobody’s going to access your system from the inside by, say, sticking a malicious USB drive into a computer.
With remote workers, keeping your company’s data secure is a lot trickier. “When everyone’s in an office, it’s easy to turn someone’s computer off,” says Jerry Bennett, founder and CEO of Melbourne, Florida-based consulting firm Privateer IT. “But in a remote workforce, you’re dealing with things like HIPAA laws and cybersecurity laws. And you’re dealing with people’s real lives.”
Bennett’s six-year-old startup, which ranked №295 on this year’s Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America, has 20 employees. All but one of them work remotely. That presents a challenge for a company that gets paid to advise on cybersecurity issues — and with clients like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Intelligence Agency, maintaining…
