Pleasant Hill, CA: Cybersecurity and Remote Working – Educating Employees

Although most work restrictions for Covid-19 have been lifted, many companies are allowing their employees to continue to work remotely. This has made cybersecurity more important than ever before. Because of the pandemic, many employees began working remotely. At the same time, criminals unleashed a more cyberattacks. A lot of these attacks take advantage of the less secure internet connections many people have at home. Cybercriminals are also sending more phishing emails, especially using the coronavirus as the subject. For these reasons and many more, cybersecurity training for employees should be considered absolutely crucial for every organization. In this blog we will review two most important topics employees should be trained on: email phishing awareness and using a secure internet network connection.

Email Phishing Awareness:
Educating employees on what phishing is and how to handle phishing emails per your company policy is extremely important. Most email phishing attempts in the workplace occur when the attacker poses as a legitimate company. However since the pandemic, there has been a massive amount of phishing emails, some still claiming to have info related to covid-19. Almost all phishing emails contain an attachment to download or a link to click which eventually leads to the computer being infected with ransomware, viruses, or other malware that can spread to other computers.
Employees should be trained to be suspicious when seeing strange emails. Instead of opening attachments or clicking any links from these messages, they can try to confirm directly with the person the email claims to come from. If the email is from a specific company, they can try going directly to the company’s website.

Using A Secure Internet Connection:
When working from home, most employees will use their home internet connection. Usually this connection is much less secure than the ones installed in their work office. Because of this, it is crucial to educate employees on the importance of using the Virtual Private Network (VPN) provided by employers. VPNs provide an encrypted and more secure passageway for communication between a company’s network and the remote worker. VPN’s can block attempts from outsiders trying to tap into the information being transmitted. The data becomes encrypted, making it unreadable to an interceptor.

We at Cantrell’s Computer Sales & Service can help you with educating you and your employees about secure internet connections, phishing emails and any other cybersecurity needs. You can call or text us at 925-827-1200.