5 Tips for Keeping the Workplace Secure
As More And More Employees Return To The Office, We Share 5 Ways To Help Everyone Stay Safe
With fall now firmly here, many offices are at full or nearly full capacity or on some sort of hybrid in-office\work-from-home rotation. While this trend means a potential upswing in productivity and creativity, it can also mean higher risks for employees and customers – risk from physical harm, or cybersecurity leaks.
At SAGE, we believe the workplace should be an invigorating, exciting, and primarily safe environment where employees can come without fear of danger. Our clients all take the physical safety and cyber security of their employees seriously, and we encourage and applaud those efforts whenever and wherever possible.
To that end, we wanted to share a few tips for how to continue improving office safety. If you’re a frequent reader of our blogs, some of these tips will be familiar to you, but some of them might be entirely new. Keep reading to see which ones we highlighted.
HIGH TECH WEAPONS DETECTION SECURITY SYSTEMS
One of the single greatest improvements you can make for the safety of your employees and your building, is better weapon detection systems.
From touchless full-body scanners to AI that can discern weapon types and help security and police respond effectively to an attacker, these new systems are some of the greatest leaps forward in security technology that we’ve come across.
Companies like Evolv and ZeroEyes are giving Facility Directors, Managers, and Business Owners tools like quicker full body scanners to check for weapons, thermal imaging to scan for weapons or to make sure that no COVID-19 infected people enter a building, and AI for real-time weapons identification.
Implementing one ore multiples of these systems throughout your building signals to your employees and customers that their safety is paramount to you and gives them the peace of mind they need to keep coming to work and staying focused on their jobs.
POINT THE WAY WITH BETTER SIGNAGE
WE go from the highest of high-tech, to one of the most practical and easy-to-implement upgrades to any building, campus, or office’s security – MORE and BETTER signs. A complaint we often hear from our client’s customers or employees, is how hard it is to find their way around a building – especially if they’re new.
So a quick way to combat that is to put up more signs, especially in stairwells, that help people know where to go and especially where to find the exits if they’re looking for them in a hurry. Signs should be large enough that anyone can read them and should be plentiful enough that there are no accidental intrusions or missteps of guests into unauthorized areas.
Better signage not only helps keep visitors oriented, but it also helps your security identify someone who is clearly not where they are supposed to be.
INVEST IN REMOTE ACCESS VPN
Because so many offices are still hybrid (and may be for the foreseeable future) giving your employees access to the all-important company files, while protecting your data and theirs, should be at top priority.
We recommend that employees who are working from home use a Remote Access Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to access their company’s data when working off-site. These highly encrypted connections are private, which means that only your employees and any tech staff have access, and you can set access controls based on levels of clearance, projects, and other protocols.
An open, unsecured connection allows possibility for intrusion and cyber-attacks and puts customer and employee data at risk. They should be avoided at all costs for those working remotely or from home.
Implementing a remote access VPN is one of the best ways to watch out for employees, whether they’re in the office, or out of it, and lets your employees and customers knows that you take their data security seriously.
ACCESS CONTROL IS STILL KEY
Access controls are one of the primary foundations of great security, and having access controls that are modern, and highly secured, make a considerable difference to those looking to threaten your workplace.
We recommend staying away from Wiegand and its one-way systems of communication, and instead opt for OSDP solutions. We also recommend using mobile access controls that include encryption – so you can keep a higher degree of control over the access controls you hand out.
UPDATE REGULARLY
Lastly, we encourage all of our clients to keep their servers and software systems up to date with the latest patches and to schedule updates regularly, so no machines fall behind.
No matter how secure a network is, if there is an unpatched or non-updated computer on it – the entire system becomes vulnerable to malware and intrusion from bad actors.
Also, meet regularly with your IT department, to see what they recommend for the present and future, in order to keep your data safe and your systems from being hacked.
THE BEST DEFENSE
If you’re concerned about employees coming back to work, or you’re just wanting to ensure you’ve given the best protection possible, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at SAGE. Keeping you and those who work for you safe, is one of our most essential services.
To learn more about SAGE Integration, and schedule a call with us, follow the link here.