Keeping yourself and your cyber-self, safe.
Chris Erven, KETS, discusses the need to protect your digital self while working from home.
These are unprecedented times we’re living in — as we all work to protect our family and friends, our NHS, and our nation from the effects of Coronavirus. First from our family at KETS to yours, we hope you’re safe and well. To anyone dealing with the direct effects of the virus, our thoughts are with you. And to all those in the NHS, on the frontlines, and volunteering a huge thanks from all of us.
As I sit reflecting after my first week working from home, now that we’ve started to get accustomed to our new ways of working in the real world, I wonder how many have taken the time to think about how we’re working in the virtual world? I imagine, like us, many of you were in a huge rush to bring laptops, computers, and other equipment home; to copy all the files you think you might need; to figure out which teleconferencing app you were going to use; and a myriad of other things. You might have even had a home-working setup competition like we did at KETS.
Hopefully with our real selves as safe as can be, now is a great time to take stock of the safety of our virtual selves as well as our online presence which has likely gotten a whole lot bigger working from home.
The National Cyber Security Centre has a huge number of resources dedicated to exactly this for individuals and families, the self-employed and sole traders, start-ups and SMEs, big business, the public sector, and cyber professionals. Particularly good is their article Home working: preparing your organisation and staff as many are looking to exploit our fears over the current situation.
It’s also a great time to take stock of your online vulnerabilities, something you might have been putting off for a while, but now is the perfect time. Again, the NCSC has a great resource called Cyber Essentials to help you protect your organisation from cyber-attack. At the most basic level it contains the following 5 self-help steps to protect yourself and your organisation online:
· secure your internet connection,
· secure the devices and software you’re using,
· control access to your data and the services you’re using,
· protect yourself from viruses and malware,
· and keep your devices and software up to date.
Beyond this, you can apply for a Cyber Essentials Certificate and even get certified by an independent expert.
By implementing these 5 steps we can cut down on something like 80% of the most common cyber-attacks. So now that we’re likely to have gotten to the end of our first week working from home and hopefully done all we can do to ensure our family and friends are safe, it’s the perfect time to improve the safety of our cyber-selves as well.
