Coronavirus: Business Continuity and Cyberthreat to Your Operations

COVID-19, or coronavirus, has been a major global health concern over the past couple of months. At this point, it is clear that this disease is having a serious impact on the workplace. We wanted to provide a brief rundown of good workplace and cybersecurity practices, as well as a few pointers on how you can handle health-based employee absences.

No Change in Your TechWorx Experience

During this period of social distancing recommendations and mandates the TechWorx office will remain open and the help desk will be available with our normal business hours. We will be able to support any of your employees working remotely just as if they were at your office.

Any scheduled installations or sales meetings will still move forward, but we may contact you to confirm prior to us coming onsite. We will be calling any people that we had sales calls with to see if they would prefer to still have an in-person meeting or phone conference instead. We can also reschedule if necessary. The health and safety of our staff and your staff is the upmost importance.

Coronavirus as a Cyberthreat

Unfortunately, coronavirus will also require you to also keep an eye on your network security, particularly if you operate within the healthcare industry. Hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of the widespread concern that the disease has caused. For example:

• Scammers have phished healthcare providers with updates that appear to have come from the World Health Organization or hospitals local to their area, but actually introduce keyloggers into their systems.
• Those involved in the medical supply chain have been targeted with emails referencing the coronavirus that install malware to steal information.
• Ransomware has been introduced into consumer systems by promising recipients of an email information about COVID-19’s spread.

While the current climate may not make it easy, these emails and other cybersecurity threats can be overcome through the same best practices that foil other cyberthreats. In addition to comprehensive digital protections, reminding your employees how to spot these threats will be crucial to staying safe

How to Maintain Productivity with Your Team at Home

With today’s technology, having an employee to work from home doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be sacrificing that employee’s productivity. We now have many ways that your team can work effectively from home, still contributing to your organization while practicing safe social distancing.

Equipping Your Employees

TechWorx can equip your employees with secure remote access solutions to continue their work from home, safely accessing the applications and data their tasks require through an encrypted connection. As collaboration will certainly be necessary, you will want to be sure that your employees are also equipped with the communication tools, such as Microsoft Teams, that facilitate this collaboration as well.

If you would like some assistance with options for remote access or help using Microsoft Teams please reach out to our help desk by email or phone 814-806-3228.

Employee Cybersecurity Awareness and Protection

As noted above, there are a lot of malicious sites disguised as reliable COVID-19 maps popping up on social media or through misleading emails that hackers are circulating. Most TechWorx clients have Open DNS installed on their work computers which will prevent employees from accessing these sites. If employees are taking their laptop with them to work remotely, they will be protected. However, if your employees are using their own computers to work from home this software is not installed on their personal computers.

Please remind employees to be cautious and aware of possible cybersecurity threats while they are working remotely.