Will COVID-19 change professional life forever?

Home working was and is essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, many workers have discovered that home working has benefits for them and a considerable proportion hope to continue working at home either fully or partly after COVID-19. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a return to full-time office working as a norm post COVID is unlikely.

With new work styles and new cybersecurity issues arising, ensuring that your business is cyber secure should be a priority for you business.

The new normal: work from home

An increase in cyber attacks was inevitable during this time.

The flex-appeal of working from home has won over many businesses during the COVID-19 crisis. Global businesses like Oracle, Apple, Google, and Amazon are all restricting travel and encouraging their employees to work remotely.

In mid-March, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Brits should avoid ‘non-essential’ travel and contact with others to curb the spread of the coronavirus, noting that employees should work from home where possible.

Due to the volume of COVID-19 related attacks, organisations should ensure that their staff are being extra vigilant and cautious especially when opening links, emails or documents related to the subject of coronavirus.

Make Cyber Essentials a priority

Cyber Essentials is a scheme created by the UK Government to help organisations to stay cyber safe. Cyber Essentials is mandatory for businesses looking to bid for new public sector contracts which include the transfer of public sector identifiable information as well as for MOD and central government contracts involving the handling of personal information and the provision of certain ICT products and services.

Unless your business achieves Cyber Essentials certification, your business will not be able to bid for such contracts at all.

Gaining Cyber Essentials certification enables organisations to showcase their credentials as trustworthy and secure when it comes to cyber security.

By evaluating an organisation’s current security measures, we support you to implement the Cyber Essentials controls in five simple steps.

The scheme focuses on the following strategies:

• Boundary firewalls and internet gateways
• Secure configuration
• Access control
• Malware protection
• Patch management

To further your understanding Cyber Essentials, we have created a Cyber Essentials checklist guide, that delves into each point to ensure you have a clear understanding of how you can implement Cyber Essentials controls and attain certification.