Before the pandemic hit the world, working at remote locations or rather work from home was supposedly believed to give a sense of joy. But now, work from home has become the new normal with the trend hitting most of the multinational corporations. But as we are trying to combat the virus by confining ourselves to our homes, some data theft ‘viruses’ are lurking outside our homes. With most of us using the setups outside the security layers of office, data thieves are trying to tap on those setups to maximize their wealth.

Remote work might be enjoyable in all aspects, but it also possesses certain downsides which can be horrifying both the recipient and the sender of the network. Looking at various perspectives as well experiencing some, I would like to highlight a few such instances:

1. Public Wi-Fi network. Usage of public Wi-Fi internet connection to do office work can be very unsecure owing to the malicious parties trying to tap the internet traffic to collect confidential information. Potential malwares such as Trojan horse, virus, worms, spyware, rootkits etc. can very easily damage your service with irreparable effects.
2. Unlocked device. When working in a public location or at home, sometimes we have the tendency to just leave it and get up to do some chore or to even just get a glass of water. In the meantime the confidential data such as office website, servers or mails gets exposed to the stranger or children at home, which can lead to data leakage, thus compromising the security.
3. Use of personal devices and networks. Most companies have started this policy where you can use your personal setups such as laptop or desktop at your home. Usually the IT Department configures all the required software in your personal device and you can use it for professional reasons. Issue arises when you are using the same device for your personal work such as installing an app or browsing in such websites which can have malicious content and thus your system, data and majorly, your confidential office data gets compromised. But then the question arises, who is to be blamed here? Is it the organization who allowed the associate to compromise company’s data with the personal setup without enough security firewall? Or is the associate who should have taken care while using it for personal uses?
4. Wary of VPN. Many a times, the remote workers are over-confident about the confidential data-security and since VPN can make the internet connection a bit slower, people tend to just overlook it. But what they forget in the meantime is that Virtual Private Network (VPN) can restrict the flow of information or data to the intended recipient as well as encrypt the data.
5. Exposure of home router. It’s a human habit to either go for very weak password or avoid password altogether, lest one might forget. And such a habit can easily throw us into the devil’s mouth.
6. Opening ‘all’ kinds of e-mails. Hackers and phishers wait for the opportunity to bask in glory when they send us a very catchy and a ‘congratulatory’ kind of mail and wait for our ‘one-click’ on that mail. And after that, everything becomes a history.
7. Device always switched-on. If we get a notification on our setup asking to restart the system in order to install the updates, we tend to reschedule it to the point when we can avoid it altogether. Non-updated device are the most-prone device to each and every kind of threat.

Just a heads up, these are some, but not exhaustive, lists of threats and danger one can face from remote work. Nevertheless, these also have their own solution but it demands a chunk of our attention and intervention. So from the next time, when you sit down and switch on your system to work, always remember there is an extra pair of eyes looking upon you.

Abort the virus, inside and outside.

Till then, stay safe.