Many of us have been ordered to move out of our offices and work from home in order to comply with state regulations. We've all had to do what we could to follow these orders, all while doing our best to keep our business up and running. It has ranged from using our cell phones instead of office calls, using Zoom or other platforms for meetings, or using cloud file services to make sure our team gets the file they need to work. During these times, we need to think about how the movement of our business data has changed and what impact it has on data backups, security, and what happens when we return to "normal".

Data is all over the place. It may even be left on non-protected employees personal equipment if that employee is working from home, exposing the security risk of losing your data. Business calls may be going to personal cell phones now. New cloud services you are using, whether is free or paid, may not be liable for the security or integrity of your data. Owners and operators need to think about what has changed in terms of data and communications flow and how this impacts the security safety of business data.

Hackers are aware of the decisions companies have made based largely on the vulnerability of the companies shifting to a remote world. They will and have taken advantage of this opportunity for themselves. Some 91% of enterprises reported an increase in cyber attacks with more employees working from home amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a global survey released by VMware Carbon Black.

As a business owner or operator, your data needs to be encrypted and backed up whether it is in movement or at rest. All of your communications such as video or audio meetings should have a passcode before allowing users to enter.

Give us a call at (213) 798-4368 and we can set you and your company up for free into a platform that holds all of your communications, file data, and even phone calls within one application!

Marc Bartholomew

CEO of Integritechs, LLC

The New Normal