file sharing is trickier than in person.
by jody grunden
building the virtual cfo firm in the cloud
working remotely has some great perks for the employees – flexible hours, no commute, casual dress and fewer distractions, to name a few. however, working remotely can also present some unique challenges when it comes to technology and security.
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unlike a traditional brick-and-mortar office, when you work remotely, no one is going to walk into your home office and set up your equipment for you. employees have to be willing and able to hook up all those cables, monitors and other peripherals themselves.
data storage and means of access may be different as well. instead of maintaining an onsite server, a small to mid-size business may use cloud storage such as dropbox, aws or onedrive.
sharing files and folders isn’t always as straightforward as it is with the traditional local area network. because some of that data may reside on a device’s hard drive, it becomes necessary to use encryption in order to protect it.
data security presents some interesting challenges for distributed companies. while it’s great that employees can take their laptop to the local coffee shop or a park to work, using public wi-fi can open them up to security risks. we require employees to use their smartphones as a hotspot so that they can tether their device or subscribe to a personal vpn whenever they work in public locations.
we also require all employees to use an online password management system (lastpass) to secure their login information and make it accessible wherever they are. gone are the days of storing login information on sticky notes attached to your computer and using just one or two easily hackable passwords for every site!
being distributed certainly poses some unique challenges, all of which can be overcome with a little patience and the right tools.
one response to “cybersecurity poses challenges for virtual firms”
frank stitely
in a distributed firm, as we are, i would not be using any of those choices for file storage. virtual workstations, when managed competently, scan files on upload and no users have system admin level access – thus defeating malware trying to execute even if it does get by the anti-malware software. security should be a huge issue for distributed firms. home computers are the biggest vulnerability.