Warm weather is here, and so are summer vacations. Of the nearly 100 million Americans who plan to travel in 2019, most planned trips in the summer, according to a AAA travel survey. In fact, 68 percent of families have a summer getaway planned. While vacations are good for employees’ mental states, they’re not always so great for a company’s cybersecurity.
In today’s mobile driven world, many people have work information on their personal devices. We’ve already discussed how this can put companies at risk on a regular basis but on vacation, when employees’ guards are down, that risk increases.
Here are three key tips to pass along to employees for preventing a cyberattack while on vacation.
- Don’t announce travel plans on social media.
When employees post travel plans on Facebook or Instagram, that information is available for anyone to see. Hackers hoping to hack into personal and work systems to gain access to key data will have a much easier time doing so if they know when those systems won’t be manned. By the same token, turn off your location and check-in apps while travelling. Hackers can use these services to note that you’re away from the office and use that to their advantage.
- Avoid bringing work devices on vacation.
It can be hard to completely ignore the email inbox for a week, but it’s the safest bet (it is vacation, after all!). Employees should leave the work laptop at home and consider disabling their work email on their phone until vacation is over. At a minimum, they should never access work information or systems unless they are positive their WiFi connection is private and secure.
- Install a privacy screen.
If an employee finds he or she absolutely must do a few work tasks on the journey, a privacy screen is key to keeping information private. Your dedicated employee might think responding to emails or cleaning up a spreadsheet on the airplane is a productive use of time, but there’s simply no telling who’s sitting next to them. Privacy screens black out the sides of the screen so people on either side can’t see its content without preventing the user from seeing what he or she needs to see. Installing a privacy screen is a simple way to protect personal and work information.
Combined with our tips for safely using personal devices to access work information, these steps can help prevent a devastating cyberattack this summer. Learn how MDL’s Enterprise Mobility Management services can further help your company prevent cyberattacks.
