When you have your own home office, one thing that you might not be worried about as much as you would in a public office is your security. However, depending on the type of job you have and the work you do, you should still be just as concerned about the safety and security of your work at home as you would be when working in a more public space. Luckily, there are a few simple things you can do to help ensure that the work you’re doing is safe and secure in your home office.
To help you learn just how this can be, here are three tips for setting up a secure home office space.
Protect Your Devices
First of all, you will want to protect the devices that you are using at home in your home office just as you would any other device that you are using for personal or professional purposes. If someone were to gain access to these devices or to the information that is kept on these devices, you could be in for a whole host of problems. But if you’re able to protect these devices effectively, you won’t have to worry about this type of threat as much.
To do this, you’ll want to do things like using strong passwords for your devices and any software you’re using on those devices, set up two-factor authentication, use encryption when possible, and store your files on a secure cloud location.
Lock Things Up
In addition to protecting the devices in your home office, you should also seek to protect the entire space of your home office as well.
When you leave your office, especially if you’re working with sensitive information, you’ll want to lock your office door so that everything is kept secure. And for the tech that you’re using within your office space, make sure that you log out after use and require a password or biometric scan to regain access to these devices and the software on them. This can be especially important if you occasionally use a laptop that you take out of your office and may leave on a coffee table throughout your home.
Think About Screen Placement
Within your home office, or as you’re working in other areas in your home, you’ll also want to think about where the screens you’re using are placed so that anyone who shouldn’t be seeing what you’re working on can’t view your screens. This can have an impact on where you put your desk in your office and how to set up your monitors.
Ideally, you should try to have your desk set up so that your monitors can’t immediately be seen by someone walking into the room or by someone who might be looking into your home office from a window.