4 Network Security Tips to Follow During the Coronavirus Pandemic

The COVID-19 outbreak is putting a major strain on companies as they struggle to maintain normal business operations and the pandemic forces them to rethink the way they work. Businesses are shifting priorities to stay afloat as COVID-19 affects every area of corporate work; consequently, tasks normally considered important may be pushed aside to concentrate on other efforts. When it comes to network security, however, companies can’t afford to slack off in order to fix other business objectives affected by coronavirus.

Malware attacks aren’t going to stop because of COVID-19. If anything, hackers will take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to attack companies while they’re at their most vulnerable. What’s more, employees working from home introduce several new potential points of entry into your business network that, if your network isn’t properly secured, could lead to a devastating attack. To keep your company protected while it deals with coronavirus, make sure you follow the four network security tips we’ve outlined below.

If you’re looking for resources to help you evaluate network security and monitoring solutions during the coronavirus pandemic, our free Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide has you covered. It contains profiles on the top network monitoring providers in the market today, including descriptions of the tools they offer and noteworthy features of each. The guide also features 10 questions you should ask prospective vendors and yourself before buying a network monitoring solution. You can check out that guide here. We also offer a buyer’s guide for free and open source network monitoring tools if you’re a small business or have a tighter budget but still want enterprise-grade monitoring for business networks. Download this guide here.

Encrypt your network data if you haven’t already

There’s really no reason not to encrypt your network data, including traffic that leaves and enters the network. That’s especially true during a crisis like COVID-19, since new attack vectors and malware designed to leech off of coronavirus-affected organizations are an unfortunate reality. Network encryption allows your company to transmit essential and/or sensitive data while protecting it from outside threats, ensuring that only the people you want accessing it are able to do so. It’s a safe bet that your IT team already has tools in place to encrypt data that flows through a network, but if you don’t, your company needs to set up network encryption ASAP.

Monitor traffic coming into the network

When you have multiple employees working from home, the need to monitor incoming traffic that travels onto your network is critical. Network monitoring solutions observe traffic at every point on a network, ensuring that your business can keep an eye on threats that try to enter your systems. This is a crucial step, as your employees are running devices on external networks which may not have the best security. While you can’t control the security of the networks your employees connect to outside the office, you can protect the network on your end to keep your enterprise safe.

Get network security alerts in real-time

If a security issue pops up on your network, the longer it takes for your network team to learn about it, the worse an impact the problem could have. Your company needs to be able to discover security problems in real-time (or as close to it as possible) in order to fix issues quicker. Most modern network monitoring tools feature real-time network alerting capabilities, informing your IT team about every issue that it encounters as soon as it’s discovered. That way, your company can counterattack security threats before they blossom into something problematic.

Prevent unnecessary office visits with remote monitoring

Even during the coronavirus quarantine, IT workers may have to come into the office in order to fix problems with the company’s network. Obviously, you want to avoid this as much as possible for safety concerns, especially when the problems with the corporate network are minor. Remote monitoring and management (RMM) solutions allow users to automate monitoring tasks through the RMM platform and reconfigure networks without physically interacting with the network. This means that users can focus on more pressing issues rather than repetitive monitoring tasks, as well as fix your network without coming into the office.

Looking for a solution to help you improve your network performance? Our Network Monitoring Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top network performance monitor vendors, as well as questions you should ask providers and yourself before buying.

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