For most CEOs the possibility of a pandemic was lower on the list than a zombie apocalypse.

According to a report on executive awareness of pandemic preparedness by Michael Evangelides, principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, most top executives and boards of directors are not engaged in the pandemic planning process and won’t give it equal billing to other potential disruptions until at least one of the following occurs:

• Media attention to pandemic influenza increases.
• Legislation or regulation emerges, requiring a high level of preparedness.
• Shareholders and investors demand a high level of preparedness.
• The financial impact of a pandemic on the corporation becomes evident.

We’re currently hitting 3 out of 4, if not 4 out of 4 at this present moment.

We understand that working from home was not a part of the Business Continuity plan C-suite executives had laid out. Even before the pandemic struck, remote work was accelerating in the U.S. But the next few months will be crucial for your business not only in enabling work from home, but enabling work from home in a secure way.“Remote workers have become a weak link that threat actors are targeting and that user credentials in offsite computing (home) environments are increasingly at risk, especially in regions with escalating cases of COVID-19.” – Cynet Report

Already, we’ve helped a dozen or so companies deal with:

• Phishing Attacks
  • The past few weeks have brought a sizable uptick in business email interruption scams (where Office 365 or Gmail accounts are hacked through a phishing email, and the hacker then sends fraudulent invoices purporting to be from legitimate vendors, with changed wiring instructions with the money going to the hacker’s account).

• Enabling Good Cyber Hygiene
  • Make sure your devices — including your internet router — are up to date on their anti-virus protection and that you’re using secure and known connections. Avoid the temptation of using Bluetooth in a public place — it is an easy way for hackers to connect to your device. Use multi-factor authentication on any accounts for which it is available.

• Enabling MFA
  • We’ve explained to countless IT teams that it is more difficult to issue multi-factor authentication tokens to offsite employees who are working remotely for the first time and to install similar technology without physical access.

• Restricting Data Access
  • Personal email should not be used for any company business, and employees need to keep track of what they are printing at home.  If the printed document would be subject to shredding in the office environment, take care to segregate and shred that same document at home, or refrain from printing it in the first place.

But realistically, these are temporary stop gaps that don’t really address the reality of employees working from home for the next 60-90 days. While it’s great that an employee can access Outlook, Salesforce, etc—there is a high probability that said employee’s password is the same for all three and even their WiFi (all of which is massive, MASSIVE red flag and easy doorway for hackers and bad actors).

So what’s the solution? Is there one?

We think VDI is the way to go.

Our Standby Virtual Desktops (VDI) enable users to have access to their data from any device or location, without compromising a business’ security or compliance standards. At the core of each Digital Bunker is a Virtual Desktop. We have created the first and only “Zero Trust” IT Infrastructure that combines the best of cloud technology while maintaining the security and control of a traditional on-premise environment. Additionally, our VDI’s enable IT teams to leverage access controls (monitoring, file management, etc.) while maintaining business continuity.

We understand that companies are in a scramble right now and we are doing our best to enable employees to securely work from home and reduce the huge overall risk of compromised pertinent data. Our Standby VDI’s can be turned on very quickly and we can get your employees up and running in no time.

At the end of the day–we are here to help keep the lights on for you during this unprecedented event.