A year of remote work: what to keep
2020 forced a huge experiment in working from anywhere. What worked for security, and what to fix in 2021.
In March, most office work moved home in a week. Nine months later, it’s worth looking at what we built in a hurry.
Keep:
- MFA on email and VPN, which many companies finally switched on.
- Cloud tools that work without the office network.
- Clear channels for IT help and for reporting suspicious messages.
Fix in 2021:
- Personal devices used for work “temporarily” since March.
- Remote access rules added in a rush and never removed.
- File sharing done through personal accounts.
- VPN appliances that missed patches because everyone depended on them.
Many companies will stay at least partly remote. Treat the emergency setup as version one, and plan version two properly.