How to Protect Your Hybrid Workplace  

Your Small Business Could Be a Big Target 

In 2020, businesses scrambled to manage a sudden shift to remote work as province after province declared a state of an emergency. Plans—and mistakes—were hastily made. Ad-hoc solutions were implemented and IT departments, if they existed, were stretched far beyond their limits. 

As the dust settles after the largest public health crisis of our life, many small businesses are realizing they are never going back to “normal.” Instead, most organizations have concluded that instead of a full-time return to the office a hybrid workplace is the best way forward. 

Why Hybrid Workplaces are the Future for Small Businesses  

A hybrid workplace creates flexibility and allows your team to thrive in whichever environment they are more productive in.  

According to the Accelerating Digital Agility report, ~57% [of people] expect to be in the office 10 days or fewer each month and 98% of people believe future meetings will include remote participants. 

While a hybrid workplace is a necessary shift to meet the changing needs of the modern workforce it can also create costly security vulnerabilities. Keep reading to learn how to prioritize and mitigate potential threats and secure your hybrid workplace. 

#2 Employees Need More Cybersecurity Training   

Organizations believe that if they invest in the right technology their business and data will always be protected. However, the platforms you use will only work as well as your team has been trained to use them. 

“Over 90% of all incidents can be traced back to mistakes such as clicking on malicious links or attachments in emails, entering organizational login information into a fraudulent website, not keeping software up to date and fixing security holes, or losing devices and equipment.” 

Conducting training to change employee behavior, attitudes, and security habits is a necessary investment for all small businesses. This is more challenging in a hybrid workplace as “1 in 3 remote workers admit they feel overwhelmed by the need to keep track of all their account credentials, it is easy to see how apathy, short attention spans, and bad cyber habits are the true adversary of a secure network.”  

Myth: My Small Business Will Never Be a Target 

A misconception that many organizations have is that hackers are not interested in targeting small businesses. The opposite is true. Malicious actors are aware that small businesses are the least likely to have safeguards in place to protect themselves.  

“As SMBs have adjusted their business models, the criminals have adapted their actions to keep in step and select the quickest and easiest path to their victims.” - 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report  

The 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report revealed that “Credential theft, errors and social attacks were the three most common culprits in breaches. Employees working from home could be particularly vulnerable to these attacks. In these uncertain times, it makes sense to focus prevention efforts here." 

Now that your people are protected, it’s time to ensure that your business data is protected, too.  

How Can Businesses Enable Secure Hybrid Work?  

Secure Hybrid Workplace Software Checklist  

If your business is actively seeking a hybrid work solution that fosters security and productivity, this checklist may help narrow your search. If you’re currently relying on a patchwork of software solutions that leave dangerous gaps in your cyber defenses, this checklist can help you identify an all-in-one solution that can deliver productivity and peace-of-mind while eliminating the IT problems you’re facing today. The right secure remote work software solution for forward-thinking businesses will: 

  Advanced threat protection and security features that help stop phishing and ransomware attacks, enable multi-factor authentication and conditional access and restrict the movement of sensitive data.

  Give you (at least) the basic essentials: email, calendaring, mobile document creation and collaboration, team communication, and file storage and sharing.

  Work from anywhere that your employees choose to work, and from a range of devices for companies with BYOD policies.  

   Provide built-in tools for managing and authenticating users, including role-based access control.  

   Enable multi-factor authentication for enhanced remote work security. 

   Help protect users from phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. 

   Help protect users from malware attacks.  

   Allow for the implementation of a data loss prevention (DLP) policy that can help monitor the transmission of sensitive information and prevent it from ending up in the wrong hands.

   Give users advanced collaboration tools, including video conferencing, whiteboarding, team chat, direct calling, recording and automated transcription options for meetings, and real-time document co-authoring.  

   Provide all of the tools your business needs with a layer of embedded security that doesn’t inhibit productivity.

Secure Remote Work Solutions From Microsoft + Bulletproof Microsoft 365 delivers an advanced productivity platform with built-in security features that can be scaled to your organization’s needs. Microsoft 365 can securely power remote workforces of all sizes, from small businesses with limited IT resources to enterprise organizations with thousands of employees. Microsoft 365 includes*: 

Data breaches don’t just happen to enterprise companies. According to a 2019 Verizon report, 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses.

Many SMBs are subject to the same security requirements as enterprise companies, but enterprise-level IT solutions can be too costly and unwieldy to simply scale down.
 
For SMBs, there are many benefits to choosing an outsourced IT partner. Bringing all the IT capabilities you need in-house on a full-time basis doesn’t make financial sense for the average small business owner. Waiting until disaster strikes and you need emergency IT services or data recovery can also be extremely costly. Finding an IT partner that you can trust adds predictability to your IT budget and gives you access to an entire team of experienced professionals for a fraction of the cost.