What an upside! Make working remotely secure & successful
Welcome to Day 19 of Business Self-Defense from Microsoft Canada. Today, we look at working remotely (otherwise known as working-from-home) and how to make it more secure and successful for everyone in your business.
Working remotely. While some business owners and managers resist the model, it can benefit a small business greatly to enable employees to avoid the commute and just work from home securely instead.
Telework reports that businesses who enable employees to work remotely save an average of $20,000 per full-time employee, see productivity increase 22 percent, and reduce employee turnover by 50 percent.
Security first!
To make any of those benefits worthwhile, of course, you need great security. You need to keep your data, applications, devices, network, and users secure. And that’s not easy to do, unless you anticipate how people typically work.
If you expect people to go through complex security processes, they won’t. They’ll find some sort of work-around, whether it’s secure or not.
Keep it real
We all know what happens. A frustrated manager downloads a new app for team collaboration. Employees share materials on USB keys and lose them. Teams communicate casually about confidential or sensitive business topics in email. Someone sends an important contract to a personal email account to read later that night.
These scenarios may seem like just another day at the office, but they should frighten anyone running a business or corporate IT.
What employees want
Employees want to be empowered, not policed. Employees need easy and secure file sharing and collaboration, including a BYOB (bring your own device) policy. Remember: If you don’t provide easy, mobile solutions, business users turn to unauthorized apps, some of which put corporate information at risk.
What business owners want
Business owners and managers want to ensure employees in the office and in the field can stay as productive, secure, and accessible as possible. Technology clearly plays a role in making that happen. But when it comes to IT, the less to manage, the better. Business owners want a single, integrated, affordable security solution.
Make everyone happy
Small and medium-sized businesses who need a simple and cost-effective way to introduce a secure work-from-home solution should investigate Microsoft 365. Combining Office, Windows, mobility, and always-on security, Microsoft 365 provides everything a modern business needs to empower their people.
Purpose-built for business, Microsoft 365 gives today’s employees the mobility, access, and security they need to compete and win.
Get the infographic
Learn more about how and why shadow IT happens. Download your copy of the “3 Ways to Outsmart Shadow IT” infographic. Make sure you share it with your team! Link here.
