Good habits have always been a key enabler of security in the organization, and they’re an essential part of your strategy to secure remote work.

With the hybrid workplace here to stay, your employees are not just working at home – they’re more mobile than ever, which means they’re connecting to your network infrastructure from many different locations. If you’re going to let staff work in an environment over which you have little to no control, you need to instill some good habits that enable secure remote work.

This is especially true if you’re going to permit your employees to work in public spaces, such as a park or a coffee shop. The argument could made that if you’re going to secure remote work effectively, you should put limits on what employees use as their workplace.

The most compelling reason is that they will use public, unsecured Wi-Fi, making them more likely to expose critical business information and even get hacked. Employees working in public spaces should only access corporate resources online through a virtual private network (VPN), even if they are working from home. Alternatively, they can use their smartphone as a hotspot rather than use public Wi-Fi.

The laptop employees use to work remotely must also be kept up to date so it’s able to handle the latest threats. You can’t secure remote work without anti-virus / malware protection software – any computer connecting to your network must have it, and it needs to be updated with the latest patches and virus definitions to protect against threat actors looking to exploit operating system and application vulnerabilities.

Just as you need to update your anti-virus software regularly, you need to update devices frequently – they should be rebooted often the latest software patches, firmware, and security fixes applied as soon as they are available. If the employee is working from home, you should make sure they’re updating their router regularly as well and any other devices on their home network.

Keeping hardware and software up to date is a habit that’s essential if you’re to secure remote work. Similarly, you must instill best practices when it comes to passwords management. Employees should understand the necessity of creating strong passwords that are unique to each login and account they use. Where possible, look at implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA). Adopting a Zero Trust approach can also help to secure remote work because it means employees are only accessing applications and data they need to.

Technology can only do so much to secure remote work – employee habits that foster good security hygiene are essential if you’re to support a hybrid workplace and mobile workers.