The outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic has changed the organizational structure around the world. Companies have to adopt a hybrid work model in order to protect their employees. In this model, they have offered both types of work environments: on-site and remote. Employees are allowed to split work time into remote locations and in-place locations at their convenience.
Organizations have no doubt increased their productivity and employees’ safety through hybrid work environments, but it has also posed a threat to data security. Therefore, this article discusses the crucial points to preserving and protecting information security in a hybrid environment.
What is a hybrid work environment?
A hybrid work environment is a form of the workplace, which incorporates both physical and digital platforms. In other words, employees can work either physically or remotely depending upon their needs.
The organization started adopting a hybrid work model after the rise of the Covid19 pandemic. It was the need of the hour to protect employees’ health by following a safe work environment. It also gives them the opportunity to choose their own mode of work that suits their obligations.
A hybrid work environment helps organizations to enhance productivity by giving flexible working hours to their workers. Through this working model, companies have to develop cloud information systems that fulfill the needs of the employees.
Therefore, it also requires you to take strong data security measures, click here to protect your crucial data from online attacks.
How to protect your data in a hybrid work environment?
Protecting your organization’s data is of utmost importance in a hybrid work environment. You can follow many effective steps and measures, which are as follows:
1. Employees’ Training
The first crucial measure that companies should take is to educate their remote employees. In this step, a company can offer a training program related to data security and perseverance. In a hybrid environment, remote workers present a bigger area of liability for the company in terms of data security.
There are a lot of possibilities that can introduce the way of data breaches and security threats to critical corporate information. It can involve employees’ poor behavior in handling data online, such as working in an insured Wi-Fi environment to using personal computers.
If your employees are unaware of the precautions for data handling, then they are doing no good, rather becoming a vulnerability. Therefore, employees’ training plays an important role in this situation. By educating them about the sensitivity and the risk factors of the hybrid work environment, you can achieve satisfaction over preserving the information system.
2. Data Encryption
The second crucial step that you should follow is to encrypt your data. It is an important tool to secure your crucial information. By encrypting your data, you can prevent many threats like unforeseen leaks, unauthorized access to data, and poor data management.
You can follow any type of data encryption method such as hardware encryption, full-disk encryption, and IPsec to secure your information system in a hybrid work environment.
Data encryption will help you secure your information system from both types of attacks: physical and virtual. It will help you achieve consistency and reliability in your target achievements without being worried about data security.
It is the ultimate solution to illegal access problems. Even if the attack does occur on your system, it will be difficult for hackers to decrypt the data. Encryption will help in limiting the attackers’ approach to damage the system completely.
3. Data Management throughout the Lifecycle
The third important thing for you is to manage your data effectively throughout its lifecycle. In order to keep the data secure in a hybrid work environment, you should always manage your data in a proactive form.
From the moment datasets are initiated on your information system, you should start taking precautionary measures. It also involves compliance with the data as well as identification of the potential threats.
In order to achieve an effective data management technique, you should automate your datasets across the system. It will improve data reliability and visibility through a proper monitoring solution.
4. Tight Data Monitoring
When you give multiple access to your employees make sure to tightly monitor the access rights. It is an important tool for data security as it will help you avoid any chance of data leaks and mishandling of information.
You can also adopt automation in the monitoring technique to increase efficiency and effectiveness. A hybrid work environment always has the urge to give multiple data requests, incidents, and endpoints, which will eventually become a liability for the company to effectively monitor the sources.
An increase in pressure will only lead to a large space of human error. Therefore, you need to select the automation process throughout the data monitoring system by simplifying the operations and detection tools for preventing time deviations.
5. Secure Internet Connection
If you are working in a remote location, then you should always ensure a secure internet connection when accessing corporate data. Attackers can easily access your data if your internet connection is weak and insecure.
The best way to secure your connection is to use a virtual private network. A VPN is a third-party security provider for the internet connection. It helps in securing the connection by hiding your identity so that no one can detect your presence on the internet.
The virtual private network ensures to encrypt the connection between the organization’s network and the employees. It also protects corporate data when your employee accesses them in a remote working position.
Conclusion
The change in organizations’ structure by adopting a hybrid work environment has arisen the need for data security. The new work environment provides productivity and flexibility to the employees. This working model offers both types of working environments, such as physical and virtual.
It will also increase the risks of data leaks, unforeseen breaches, and malware attacks on the company’s information system. Therefore, it is essential to take some strong precautionary measures to tackle the data security issue.
