Security Awareness for Distributed Teams

Best Practices, Technology

(Guest post from Cybernews)

According to researchers at Ladders, 25% of professional jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022. Remote jobs skyrocketed from under 4% in 2019 to 9% in 2020 alone. This means that working from home is here to stay.

With this change in the job market demand, distributed teams have become more common and will continue to be adopted by small and big businesses alike. The need to secure company and employee data is important given the rise of internet scams. It is advisable to have all team members engage in security awareness training to have them prepared against malicious hackers and phishing sites.

Here are measures distributed teams can take to protect themselves and the company from a security breach.

Public Wi-Fi

Avoid using public Wi-Fi, especially from unknown service providers. If you must connect to a public server ensure you have a VPN installed on your computer to prevent hackers from monitoring your internet activity.

Social engineering

Social engineering uses manipulative techniques to gain confidential information that can put an individual or company at risk of cyber-attacks. Hackers have gotten smarter over time creating the need to be cautious mainly when workers use their own devices for office duties. Here are tips to save you from falling victim to such scams.

  • Be suspicious if an unknown person asks you for information, they shouldn’t have access to it. All workers have team leaders they report to or team members that handle specific company data. If someone aside from the usual team member is asking for such data, be alarmed and report it to your team leader.
  • Pay attention to emails. It can be daunting to always have to check an email sender to be sure you’re not under a phishing attack, but it can save you from putting your company at risk. Look out for grammatical errors and the sender’s email address to be sure they aren’t impersonating your company’s or an employee’s email.
  • Beware of heightened urgency. Resist the rush to perform an action if you are feeling pressured to perform a certain action. Creating urgency is a common tool phishing scammers use to make their victims act fast. You should be more suspicious if the person is trying to make you ignore a mandatory security protocol.
  • Always hover over links to see where they lead. Don’t be quick to click links and open attachments sent to you from new contacts. Offerings of things that are too good to be true are not true. An example is an email congratulating you on an iPhone in a competition you never attended.
  • Never download unauthorised software or plug in an unauthorised drive or USB to your device.

Setting passwords

Most websites will tell you to create an 8-character password that contains uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols that should be changed every 90 days. However, cybercriminals now use technology that allows them to crack an 8-character password in 4 hours. That’s why you should be using strong password management.

Instead, use a 12–16-character password with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. You can create a passphrase using multiple small words like “tiNyTombSPoon.” Combining your passphrase with numbers and special characters is advisable for added difficulty. Complex passwords like this should be changed every two years.

Never save passwords to browsers. Never share your passwords with anyone or log in to your work accounts with public computers. Ensure you use a unique password for each account, you can use a password keeper if necessary.

Always use two-factor authentication for all your accounts. Never use the same passwords for your personal and work accounts. Make sure to separate your personal and work life.

Security awareness at home

In a world of distributed teams, it is normal for workers to spend more time at home than in an office. Here are measures that can be taken to stay safe when working from home.

  • Never grant anyone access to your desktop unless you sort the remote connection. Always be careful of remote desktop inquiries. Never give out your login details to anyone over email or phone without consulting your supervisor.
  • Don’t respond to non-company numbers or messages regarding an issue when you didn’t open a ticket.
  • If you will be filling your data into any websites while working, ensure they begin with https://
  • Ensure your Wi-Fi router is secured with a strong password. Always restart your router frequently.
  • Keep your working devices out of the reach of family and guests. Use a different internet network for work and family or guests.
  • Only use company-approved USB sticks. Never use unencrypted USB sticks to connect or charge your work device in public places.
  • Never leave your work device unattended. If you aren’t actively using your device ensure you exit your work screen and lock or close your device.

Security awareness in videoconferencing

All virtual meetings should be cyber-safe and not open to the public. Links to video meetings must not be shared on public sites. Ensure all meetings require passwords to join. Avoid starting a meeting without the host – rather create a meeting room.

Enable host-only sharing, accept one user at a time, and lock the meeting after all the participants are in.

Other security measures

  • Avoid using your personal computer or smart devices for work. Ensure your operating system, antivirus and apps are updated frequently.
  • Beware of phishing links sent to your email. Alert your family members on using your devices without your supervision.
  • Beware of pop-ups on free movie sites and apps asking you to install software from unverified sources.

Conclusion

Although it is impossible to be 100% secure, raising awareness of the cybersecurity risks and taking all security measures stated above is key to preventing a security breach that can lead to catastrophic events. Ensure each team member is properly oriented on security measures to employ and things to look out for to prevent getting hacked.

A new template: Career Development for your Employees

Kanban & Lean, ,

We have a new Kerika template for folks who need to manage Career Development for their employees, in the private, public or nonprofit sectors.

Career Development Template

This template contains all tasks you need to complete, and it also comes with document templates, like this one for doing a Performance Appraisal:

Performance Appraisal

This template was prepared for Kerika by an experienced HR professional; we hope you find it useful!

Let us know what other templates we should be building.

 

How to import boards from Trello

Kerika, Technology, Usability,

We have added an exciting new feature: if you were previously using Trello, you can import that data, completely, into Kerika!

We have been testing this as a convenience feature and based upon positive feedback we have expanded this for everyone.

New users will be offered this as an option when they set up their Kerika accounts:

Screenshot showing how new Kerika users can import boards from Trello
How new Kerika users can import boards from Trello

All users will have this option whenever they want to create a new Kerika board:

Screenshot showing how all users can import from Trello when creating a new Kerika board
All users can import from Trello when creating a new Kerika board

We built this feature because we have heard from many people switched over from Trello and really liked Kerika’s user experience, features, and support. In the past they had to manually recreate their work inside Trello; now that’s all automated!

Everything is handled nicely: your Trello cards, lists, people, task details, etc. come over. Once you are done, a single click can then send out invitations to all your old Trello colleagues to join you in Kerika.

Enjoy.

 

A change to our Privacy Policy

Kerika,

We have updated our Privacy Policy because we have decided to use Microsoft Clarity, at least on an experimental basis, to understand better how visitors navigate our website.

Microsoft Clarity uses cookies (see here for more details), and you can reject or block them if you want; it won’t affect your use of the website or the app.

We have a lot of different website pages, but we still need a better understanding of how people actually view them, and which parts seem to be most important to our users.

Google Analytics provides some of that information, but not enough, and it looks like Microsoft Clarity will help us optimize our website content.

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

A change to our Privacy Policy

Kerika,

We have updated our Privacy Policy because we have decided to use Microsoft Clarity, at least on an experimental basis, to understand better how visitors navigate our website.

Microsoft Clarity uses cookies (see here for more details), and you can reject or block them if you want; it won’t affect your use of the website or the app.

We have a lot of different website pages, but we still need a better understanding of how people actually view them, and which parts seem to be most important to our users.

Google Analytics provides some of that information, but not enough, and it looks like Microsoft Clarity will help us optimize our website content.

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

How to make sure someone sees your Chat

Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Usability, , , , , , ,

With our latest update we have made it easy for you to ensure that someone on a board team always sees your chat message, even if they are not assigned to that card.

The old rule was that everyone who is currently assigned to a card would get new chat pushed to them as emails.  Now, you can make sure someone gets that email notification right away, even if they aren’t assigned to a particular card:

Screenshot showing examples of directed chat
Directed chat

Using this feature is simple: just type the letter “@” anywhere in your chat message and Kerika offers all the matching suggestions:

Screenshot showing example of sending new chat
Sending new chat

“@All” lets you push your chat to every Board Admin and Team Member — something you should do only rarely to avoid annoying people!

Try this feature and let us know if we can improve it.

A simple weekly calendar

Kanban & Lean

Here’s a simple template that you can use to plan your work week: for yourself, and the team.

Screenshot of simple template for Weekly Schedule
Click to view this template
How to use this template:
  1. As tasks land on your desk through the day, add them as separate items (cards) in the left-most To Do column.
    • At least once a day make sure everything in the To Do column is sorted by priority, with the most important items on the top of the column.
  2. Every Monday plan out your week by dragging tasks from the To Do column to one of the days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, etc.)
  3. When you plan your week, consider any deadlines for your tasks. Not all tasks will have firm deadlines, but if they do, you should open the task and set a due date.
    1. Click on your face/avatar in the top-right corner of the app and use the Sync Calendar option to make sure your due dates from Kerika also show up in whatever calendar you use: Apple, Microsoft or Google. This needs to be done only once: after you connect your personal calendar with your Kerika account, any changes in due dates that you make in Kerika will automatically show in your calendar as well.
  4. Consider whether this is a personal calendar or a team calendar: if you want to plan out the week for an entire team, add them as Team Members to this board by clicking on the Board Team button. This is a great way to keep an entire team in sync.
  5. If you are using this as a team board, when you pick up tasks one by one make sure you set the status of each to In Progress, or whatever is relevant. This makes it easy for everyone on the team to know what’s happening, which is especially important in these days of remote work.
  6. When a task completes, mark it as Done! If you decide that a task doesn’t make sense anymore (maybe it is no longer needed?) you can move it to the Trash.
At the end of the week, hopefully, everything in the Monday through Friday columns will be moved to Done.
At the beginning of the next week, you can repeat the process: pull items from the To Do column into the other columns as you plan your next week.
New tasks will, of course, show in the middle of the week: the best thing to do is add them to the To Do column unless they are urgent; this will help you and your team not get disrupted too often during the middle of the week.
Try this template and see if your workweek gets less hectic.