Travel restrictions and work-from-home policies do not have to put your organization at risk

It’s easy to feel helpless as Covid-19 continues to spread throughout Asia and the rest of the world. Health professionals are urging people to avoid crowds and public spaces, forcing many workplaces—from factories to office buildings—to shut down. But business must continue. An economic downturn caused by the epidemic would only make things worse, preventing people from getting the help and resources they need while exacerbating impacts from the disease.

The government in Singapore has released a best practices guide for maintaining business continuity during the Covid-19 crisis .

Recommendations include:

• Implement flexible work arrangements for high-risk employees as well as employees who need to stay at home to take care of vulnerable family members
• Review employee management policies such as leave of absence, absenteeism, sick leave, overseas travel, workplace closure, and recall of noncritical employees and their families from affected countries
• Adhere to all travel and health advisories
• Comply with quarantine orders

These travel restrictions and work-from-home policies don’t have to be disruptive. Fortunately, most business today is conducted on the Internet through rich web apps, websites, and Software-as-a-Service platforms. No longer are employees required to work exclusively in the office. Whether for convenience or to meet public health needs, organizations can allow employees to work from home, conduct meetings and customer engagements through video conferencing, and use cloud-based collaboration and presentation tools such as Google Docs, DocuSign, Office 365 and Dropbox. Unfortunately, accessing these web- and cloud-based tools outside the corporate firewall prevents IT from monitoring web traffic for malicious activity or making sure browsers are updated and patched consistently.

The only way to protect remote users is by delivering security services through the cloud. Cloud security ensures that policies follow users wherever they log in—whether it’s from corporate headquarters, a remote office, a customer site, a home office, or public Wi-Fi. One of the services you can deliver through the cloud is isolation. It doesn’t matter if there’s a known or unknown vulnerability on the endpoint, because no content—whether it is malicious or not—is executed on users’ browsers.

Menlo Security product suites give enterprises a way to protect work-from-home employees from cyberattacks by delivering security services such as isolation through the cloud. The Menlo Security Global Cloud Proxy with an Isolation Core™ provides a ubiquitous and separate security layer in the cloud through which all web traffic flows. It’s here where security policies—including isolation—can be applied to each workload, ensuring policy enforcement regardless of whether the user is behind a firewall or logging in from public Wi-Fi. In terms of patching, Menlo updates its browsing engine as soon as possible—providing protection for endpoint devices even before they are patched individually.

Download the Menlo Security Protects Remote Workers Wherever They Access the Internet

today to learn more about how you can protect employees working from home during the Covid-19 crisis.