Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Optrics Insider Shaun Sturby & Scott Young

Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

We wanted to bring in and talk to Shaun Sturby, our Technical Services Manager, who is the one on the street who is talking to our clients and keeping an eye on how things are going out there in the networking world and share the Top Three things that IT Managers and IT Directors Should Be Thinking About now that your staff are mainly working from home.

Scott: Before we do that why don't you introduce yourself Shaun and and talk about some of your experience so far in your IT career.

Shaun: Thanks for the intro Scott. I have been the Manager of Technical Services here at Optrics Engineering for the last 20 years or so. I started in the IT industry in the early 90s with Novell NetWare and back when this "Internet thing" was just starting out. In the last 20 years or so I've been at Optrics focusing on security solutions and dealing with our clients, and all of their unique requirements.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Scott: Perfect and for those of you who are our clients this is the guy you probably talk to when getting a demo or professional services whether it be implementation or training on one of the solutions you purchased from us so today you get to see him live in person. Thank you for that Shaun. Let's now talk about the Top Three things you should be thinking about to keep your staff working from home safely.

Shaun: Yeah sure so a lot of people when the this idea of working from home came along they had to set up whatever they had so if it was a home computer that the person had all of a sudden now it's got a connection back to the oďŹƒce and is being used to do everything that they had done as if they were in the oďŹƒce. However, this is not a corporate managed device so we've got to keep the end-users safe. We gotta remind them that if they're the IT person for their own home computer and to make sure that it is up-to-date, that there's a good antivirus solution in place and that that all of the products or software that's on it are up- to-date and not exploitable versions. Now if they can't do that you might want to add them into whatever local management tool you are using so that you can now get a visibility into whether or not they are up-todate or are running an ancient Windows XP version of Windows and have no antivirus.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Scott: Well the other thing to keep in mind Shaun is that as organizations are changing how they do things especially with using collaboration tools or webinar tools or web conferencing tools is not everybody is trained on using them. So just keep in mind that you could have a pocket of users, depending on the size of the organization, who aren't super comfortable with it and so it's worth perhaps even doing a poll not just from a security perspective, but from a training perspective making sure that everybody is up to snuff.

Shaun: Another thing that I've recommended is if they can make a change to the their DNS settings to use some of the family friendly DNS services out there that are going to automatically block them from going out to known malware sites.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Scott: Such as OpenDNS ...

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Shaun: There's OpenDNS and for Canadian clients CIRA has recently come up with a service again free for home users that's very easy to set up as well as very simple to use and it's just another layer of protection.

Scott: Speaking of protection let's talk about not only keeping our staff working from home safe, but also making sure that your own network is safe. You had some thoughts on that as well.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Shaun: Correct yes. So to be able to work from home a lot of companies are setting up VPN connections, which are great, while others might just be enabling Remote Desktop Protocol into their network. The Internet is telling us that there's a lot of scanning for these open networks for open RDP connections. If you have to open it up VPN would be a better solution, but you can always do some geofencing. If all of your end-users are in North America why open up your ďŹ rewall rule to the entire Internet? Maybe restrict it or a better option would be to survey your end users and get their IP addresses. This could be as simple as sending them a link asking for the IP address a site like www.WhatIsMyIPAddress.com gives them? They can do a screenshot or do a copy and paste for that send it back to IT and now you can limit it so that only if they're coming from their home IP address are they allowed into your network.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Scott: The final thing that we wanted to discuss for the pros and cons of working from home is it necessarily a bad thing as in some cases it could be more efficient. Now from what I'm hearing there are a lot of organizations who had already had their staff working from home so this is nothing new for them. So long as you're already set up in a "distraction-free environment" and you have a home office it certainly works better then going to a traditional office. The commutes are easier and it provides lots of flexibility, but I think the big thing here is a having a distraction free zone. What are some things that you're seeing in that regard?

Shaun: Yeah being able to set up a space that is designated for work and explaining that to your family is ideal. When I'm in this room or when I'm at this desk I'm at work. I've seen lots of people, because of having kids at home, where if both parents are also working from home that maybe they shift their schedules a little bit where one parent will take care of the kids in the morning and then do all of their work you know noon on and that way they can, if there's the flexibility in their work schedule, to still maintain their family environment, but also be efficient as far as working is concerned.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Scott: One thing we've implemented here at the oďŹƒce, since we're in an open environment, is to have a symbol for when you should not be disturbed if you're in focused time or client time. Could be something like "orange cone time" or a symbol that says if the door is closed I absolutely can't be disturbed unless the house is burning down.

Shaun: Like TV or radio station on air sign yeah as simple as a little piece of paper or sticky note on the door I'm busy.

Scott: Yeah do not disturb. What are some tools that you recommend that people look at right now to make sure that that their staff for working home safely that their their network is safe and also making sure that their staff are working eďŹƒciently anything come to mind?

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Shaun: Well we already mentioned using some family friendly DNS services on their home PCs so if they go out to the web or if somebody sends them a link that leads to a malicious site that they accidentally clicked on it they might not actually go out to it. Some training and education on phishing scams, like KnowBe4, would be good too.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

The malware writers and scammers are ramping up their efforts especially trying to do the spear phishing where they claim to be the CEO. For example, "Can you please run out and get me or buy online one hundred of these iTunes cards so we can send them out to every one of our users? You're going to use your own credit card for this, but will reimburse you once this is over". This is happening a lot more.

I talked about making sure your end user's home PCs are up-to-date. You might actually have to update your antivirus and/or management tool account so that you can bring those into the fold. At the very least make sure your users have an updated antivirus. You can see the status of their software patching using a tool like ManageEngine Desktop Central.

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

If it's properly set up it can reach out to PCs outside of your network and we're ďŹ nding a lot of our clients are using tools like that to make sure that the home users and their PCs are kept up-to-date.

Scott: On the antivirus side of things have a look to see if the vendor your working with on your corporate network has a deal on providing home user versions of the same thing .

Shaun: Yeah they are doing that and they are also making a three or six months subscription available at no charge.

Scott: It would be worth making sure that everybody is on a common platform and I'm sure as an IT person trying to patch 50 different types of antivirus that's just a great way to go so having everybody on the same thing and making sure that it's done correctly is a is a good thing.

Great well any ďŹ nal closing comments Shaun or do you think we've got it well covered off?

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Optrics Insider - Top 3 Work from Home IT Security Challenges

Shaun: I think we've got it well covered off thanks for the discussion Scott.

Scott: Yeah no problem and I look forward to doing them again.

So hopefully everyone we've provided some good tips and food for thought, stay safe out there and we'll chat again bye for now.

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Optrics Engineering Optrics Engineering is a licensed engineering ďŹ rm specializing in network hardware, software consulting and training solutions coupled with a successful Internet-based technology-marketing company.

Vendors we represent include: - A10 - Extreme Networks / Aerohive - Castle Rock Computing - Cisco - Dell - Ekahau Wi-Fi Design - HP - KnowBe4 - HelpSystems - Kemp Technologies - Loadbalancer.org - MailStore - ManageEngine - Microsoft - Quest - Ruckus - Unitrends - WatchGuard For a full listing of our partners go to: Optrics.com/partners