This is Part 2 of our post to determine if your business can survive working remotely. If you missed the last post, you can read it here.
As we stated in Part 1, it’s time to “harden” your remote solution and ensure you can make it past a short period of remote work. While parts of the country are opening up, you should be prepared for a 2nd wave of remote work.
Here are the last of the 9 questions you should ask yourself to ensure your business can last for the long haul.
Technological Factors
6. For annual or semi-annual activities like business planning, employee reviews, town halls, etc., has the capability to run these successfully through remote technologies been established? While you may be able to delay some of these processes in the short term, you won’t be able to avoid them in the long-term. Now is the time to review those processes and procedure and look at how you can re-engineer them to be done anywhere. Chances are your business is going to feel the effects of the Covid19 downturn for the rest of the year. Now is the time to start your planning for the 3rd and 4th quarters, and for next year.
Security Factors
7. Is your staff trained to handle all of your data safely while remote/at home and potentially on their own devices? Having your employees work from home introduces new holes and risks in your security profile. Employees working from a home Internet connection and with their personal devices can open up holes for hackers to access your systems. And with the host of IoT devices in homes now, they open up more security holes. A review/assessment of cybersecurity systems and procedures can identify those holes and risks and allow you to fix them before they become a problem.
8. Do you have data sharing/transfer/storage capabilities setup to ensure secure transfer of data or are you relying primarily on email and triage access rights to get around current infrastructural limitations? We discussed this issue above as a technological issue, but realize this is also a security issue. Email is one of the least secure ways to transfer data and files, as it can open up security holes. Yet people are still using it as a means to transfer documents and data. A simple typo can send sensitive information to places it shouldn’t be. As part of your cybersecurity assessment, make sure you have this covered for your remote staff.
9. How has your security threat monitoring and response evolved in this new environment? When your workers are in your offices, it’s much easier to detect threats and you can also respond to them much quicker. With your entire team working from home, do you have the means in place to detect any threats? And how quickly can your team respond to them? Most companies don’t have proper monitoring and response plans in place, and for those that do, many have never tested their plans. Cyberattacks are up in the era of Covid19, you don’t want to become a statistic. Be sure to review your plans on an ongoing basis to ensure you are covered.
Moving Forward
At this point, none of us really know when we will be getting back to “normal”, nor do we know what the new “normal” will be. As business leaders, it’s imperative that we continue to explore the new “what if’s” in our business to prepare for more of the unexpected. Preparing now for more of the current work situation will put you in more control of your company and processes, and hopefully allow you to get your business growing and prospering.
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