What Cyber Security Concerns Should Employers Have?

We’re living in an increasingly digital world, which is why cybersecurity is more important than ever. Brands in particular have adapted to a more digital way of doing business and while there are many benefits of using technology to run a company, legal issues may arise surrounding cyber specific topics.

Guy Sereff, Senior Counsel at Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, is a privacy and cybersecurity attorney who primarily focuses on helping clients with a wide range of cyber security related issues, such as governance issues, policies, and compliance, as well as “all of the fun questions that come up around data from a legal perspective and also from a practical perspective. I’ve got quite a bit of history within enterprises,” Sereff explained.

Sereff warns that as COVID-19 forced countless office workers to work in their homes, that new issues relating to digital privacy and security are arising, “I think the big issues that are popping up and are going to continue to pop up, is how consistent was the deployment of the work from home strategy?” Sereff posed a series of questions that can serve as a starting off point for companies concerned about their remote workforce’s security levels, “How consistently were your employees using whatever environment you created? Because the issue that I see is going to arise, as we return to work, is how much work product was generated on a PC that wasn’t connected to a VPN or a VDI?”

Depending on what resources employees are using from home, security and compliance issues may be a concern. For example, employers may not know the answers to these questions which may be cause for concern.

• How many file shares were used?
• Were employees utilizing Dropbox?
• Were they utilizing Google Cloud?

“The resulting issue is, how much proliferation of data are we going to see? And I think that’s one of the big things to try to get a grip on now, is getting control of any of that data that may have leaked outside,” Sereff said.

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