Winter Weather Introduces Work from Home Security Issues

As winter storms hit, remote work has made life much more convenient. One of the biggest upsides of remote work is it allows employees in northern climates to avoid a dangerous drive to work after an overnight snowfall.

However, with convenience comes new security challenges — something one of our clients experienced firsthand during a recent snowstorm.

An employee decided to work remotely to avoid the hazardous conditions but didn’t have her work laptop at home. With her manager’s permission, she used her personal laptop to log in to company systems (which should never be allowed). This triggered our security measures: a new device attempting to access company data (in this case, Microsoft 365) using the correct credentials but appearing from an unknown device.

To complicate matters further, her personal laptop was running a personal VPN that hid her IP address, making the login look even more suspicious — essentially mimicking an attack.

Following security protocol, we locked the account to prevent any potential breach. When we contacted the user to verify the activity, she was understandably frustrated about being locked out, especially since she didn’t realize her personal VPN contributed to the issue. Resolving the situation took significant time and effort, which could have been completely avoided.

This incident illustrates why proper preparation is so important when employees plan to work remotely during bad weather. Here are some steps your organization can take to avoid similar challenges.

Take Your Laptop Home When Bad Weather is Coming

While weather can be very unpredictable, snowstorms can be monitored days before they occur, making it easy to plan for inclement weather.

We understand packing up your laptop every night can be tedious, but we’d recommend at least bringing it home with you if you know a snowstorm is coming.

If you want to get into the habit of taking your laptop home every night, you can optimize your laptop setup at the office by purchasing a docking station, which you can read more about below.

Replace Desktops with Laptops

If your organization has desktops instead of laptops, consider asking your employer to purchase laptops.

Laptops are much more versatile than desktops, allowing you to work anywhere, from your home office to a coffee shop. (Just make sure you avoid public Wi-Fi and utilize your phone’s mobile hotspot feature if applicable.)

The downside with laptops is they aren’t designed to handle resource-heavy programs like video editing or 3D modeling software. There are powerful laptops that can handle these programs, but a desktop will always outperform a laptop dollar-for-dollar.

Your organization doesn’t necessarily have to purchase laptops for every employee, but at least for anyone who might ever work from home.

Simplify Setup With a Docking Station

A docking station allows you to plug several peripherals (like a keyboard, mouse, ethernet cable, monitors, etc.) into your laptop, which then connects to your device using a single USB-C cable.

This makes bringing your laptop home every night much easier, as you only need to unplug one cable.

Furthermore, you can keep the laptop’s original power cable at your house or in your travel bag to charge it when you work from home.

Avoid Security Risks When Working from Home

Protect your organization’s data by purchasing laptops so employees don’t access work data on personal devices. Contact us here, and we’ll help you find laptops that can handle your line-of-business applications.

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