Is It Safe To Use A Work Computer At Home?

Since the pandemic, many people have been working from home. Not everyone has access to an efficient laptop or computer, thus they have been using work computers. Is this safe or does it pose dangers?

Image by Luis Ricardo Rivera from Pixabay

Lower malware security

Using a computer at home, whether is it your own on your work computer, reduces malware security. This means you are at a heightened risk of cyberattacks, which could lead to leaking your personal information or losing data. Although you can use data disaster recovery to help you recover your business’s assets, records, and more, you will not want to have to deal with that issue if you can avoid it.

If you do encounter an attack and lose your data, you can get help. So, don’t panic too much but do make sure to use a secure internet connection to reduce the risk of attacks. No matter if your hard drive has corrupted, your computer has been stolen, or your system hacked, a disaster recovery operation will recover as much data as possible.

Less personal security for employees

Your data and information are safer in the office environment. If anything were to go wrong, it would be down to your company to sort it instead of you. By using a company computer at home, you may put your or your colleague’s information at risk. Thus, you must take it as a responsibility to never click on phishing emails, use safe wifi, and ensure you have cybersecurity installed. You will want to increase your cybersecurity to ensure the safety and privacy of your own, as well as your employee’s, data.

Other users at home may cause disruption

If a personal computer is shared among multiple family members, even with multiple user profiles, there are very few mitigations to prevent an infection or poor judgment of one individual from infecting others. Besides, techniques like fast user switching compound the problem by keeping other profiles in memory, making them susceptible to a variety of attacks based on other active profiles. A compromise of one user not related at all to the organization can be leveraged against an active VPN session connected to the organization.

Your boss cannot oversee your issues or potential risks

Organizations do not have the authority to manage an individual’s home computer. While network access control solutions can validate antivirus signature versions and other basic hardware characteristics, they cannot inventory a home computer to ensure it is hardened and maintained like a corporate asset. These gaps, even when connected to a bastion host, can allow data leakage from keystroke loggers and screen-capturing malware that can place data and the organization at risk.

Whether you are using a work computer at home or in a cafe, always ensure to be on top of using secure wifi and be mature about how you use the computer. You will not want to put your and your companies data at risk.